To the Sunny Shore: A Guide to Living Joyfully by Norbert F. Čapek—Chapter 5: Hidden Desires and Passions

To read about why I’ve begun this ongoing translation project, please lick THIS link. Corrections/alternative suggestions to the translated text from Czech readers/speakers will be most welcomed. Either add them in the comments section below or be in touch with me via the contact form on this blog. I need all the help I can get!

Please remember that this book was written between 1925-1939 when attitudes and ideas about all kinds of things were different to many of those we hold today. Also, recall that our own understandings of how the human body and mind works has undergone many changes since 1939. Consequently, although I have little doubt that we will find in Čapek’s book much that is useful, highly relevant and positive, we’ll also likely find a few things that jar with us, along with some things that seem simply to be wrong. But this is, of course, always the case whenever we are exploring a text written in a different age to our own.

With that caveat made, I hope you enjoy and find interesting and helpful the first-draft translations that appear here, and in subsequent posts over the coming months.

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Source Czech language PDF for this post can be found here.

Norbert F. Čapek
K slunnému brehu
Prúvodce do radostného Zivota

To the Sunny Shore

A Guide to Living Joyfully

Nakladatel Edv. Fastr, Praha (1939)

 

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5 — Hidden Desires and Passions

The ability to choose emotions. – Inner conflicts and hidden desires. – Why we should not suppress unpleasant emotions. – Causes of some angers and sorrows. – Hidden roots of moods. – How to find oneself within oneself. – The cravings of primitive and modern people. – American eccentricity. – Alcoholism and hypersensitivity. – Deliberate and unintended expressions of emotions.

Is it possible for someone to like something they are convinced they hate?

“I’m terribly angry,” a certain merchant tells me, “tell me how to rid myself of this vice!”

“You will stop being angry when you stop liking your anger,” I replied.

He stared at me in amazement and said, “I can’t imagine how I could hate this flaw any more than I already do. After every outburst, I feel remorse.”

I replied, “You even like that remorse, just as a drunkard likes alcohol.”

He didn’t know whether I was joking or being serious. I meant it very seriously, and his anger disappeared as soon as I managed to convince him that he actually did like it, along with the remorse and all the excitement associated with it.

A certain woman, after every outburst of her quick temper, could cry her eyes out—and yet her temper, along with those streams of tears, was as much a presumed necessity of her emotional life, just as swearing or cigarettes might be for someone else. She recognized this and thereby cured herself.

I know well how difficult it is for someone to believe that they take pleasure in their unpleasant emotions. It is like certain foods or drinks: a person grows fond of them, even though they know they are harmful. I’m not saying they love them with their whole being, but I insist that there is always something within them that has chosen those undesirable feelings and even wishes for them.

It is a fact that we ourselves decide which mental states, and with what emotional coloring, will gain dominance within us.

A person who knows how to want and truly wants can choose the state of mind they like the most and that most beneficially affects their body, soul, and surroundings.

A modern psychologist might say: “Tell me what you feel, and I will tell you who you are. Tell me what you love, what you fear, what angers or irritates you, and I will describe your character, your behaviour, and the condition of your health.”

Whoever allows themselves to be swept away by their emotions also sweeps away everything else: nerves, brain, glands, willpower, and reason. Every nervous invalid, every person turned gray by worry, and every face lined by prolonged anxiety bears witness to how mental states, emotional excitement, and life perspectives affect a person as a whole.

Usually, a person finds it hard to believe that they have the ability to control their mood. Everything suggests to them that they are as innocent of their moods as they are of the fact that it sometimes rains or snows. According to their opinion, moods have no roots in anything that could fall within the reach of personal control but are rather something imposed from the outside, like a thief breaking into a house or rising prices increasing the cost of goods.

The opposite is true. Most of the contradictions occurring within us arise from the fact that a person remains an unknown continent to themselves.

The Apostle Paul aptly describes this conflict when he says: “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” Paul’s interpretation of this inner struggle was, of course, different from that presented by modern psychology. Today, we know that the inner conflict arises from the clash between instinctive desires rooted in the subconscious and our conscious ideals.

Every mood is usually the result of our choice. Moods that we consciously disapprove of correspond to some hidden desires within us, with which we have not fully reconciled, which we suppress, and we avoid energetically resolving them on the open field of our daily consciousness.

Whether we admit it or not, every mood that we condemn in our consciousness can persist precisely because some parts of us find satisfaction in it and because it is the expression of emotions that something within us cannot part with.

Let us not forget that indulging in certain emotions, even harmful ones, creates a habit, a mental automatism that, with each new indulgence, becomes stronger and more insistent.

Working forcibly against undesirable moods is of no help. Instead, at the moment when we resolve not to suppress any unpleasant feeling or desire hidden in the depths of our subconscious, and instead we desire to acknowledge and confess even the most hidden ones—that moment can become a quiet moment of self-examination—our subconscious will stop concealing its depths from us, and many things may arise that surprise us. Many desires that were unpleasant to us and were suppressed will come to the surface, some perhaps from the time of distant childhood. The first step is thus to uncover and acknowledge to ourselves those hidden roots and causes of bad moods.

To facilitate that self-examination, we will present several types of roots that tend to persist in the subconscious and cause undesirable outbursts of emotions and passions.

A frequent phenomenon is childish anger. If we observe a child well when they are angry, we find that through their agitation, they want to escape an unpleasant fact or cover up their mistakes. It is a kind of self-defense for the weak.

The one who gets the most angry is the one who feels their inadequacy the most, even if only subconsciously. The least angry is the one who is aware of their strength and superiority. They are closer to laughter than to anger. A certain feeling that we are not being seen in a favorable light, that something is infringing on our rights, that we are being defeated in some way, are weak, or not sufficiently respected, can play a role here.

Some people, however, wish to evoke a peculiar kind of pity for themselves. Of course, if someone were to come and say, “Accept my sincere condolences,” they would become even angrier. And yet, essentially, it is about nothing other than eliciting, through anger, sadness, or some other negative mood, a kind of sympathetic condolence. If we decide that we do not wish to evoke pity or sympathy in any form, we rid ourselves of the need for these distressing feelings and of “self-pity.”

This does not mean that a person should never complain under any circumstances or accept encouragement and comfort. It can be quite difficult to find the right boundary between self-pity and the dignified discussion of certain life experiences.

Another type of hypersensitivity and irritability is often the result of internal tension caused by unfulfilled desires that demand to be expressed. If a person is internally disturbed because they cannot obtain the clothes they want, cannot present themselves in society as they wish, cannot achieve the education or position they desire, or if their longing for the opposite sex is more heightened than circumstances, various considerations, or ethical feelings allow; or if a person burns with longing for a family, a household, for travel, or for excelling in some field, inner excitement and restlessness arise, which intensify with every new thought and idea that feeds those desires.

A person can usually only tolerate such tension to a certain limit; and if that limit is ever exceeded, even a quite insignificant event can cause it to burst to the surface. The outburst can appear in the most varied forms.

We can deceive ourselves, and our friends can also deceive themselves, about the most fundamental cause of our irritability, agitation, nervousness, quick temper, and grumpiness—in short, our bad mood. Anyone who observes themselves carefully will soon notice how, before every outburst, they felt some kind of internal pressure, which kept building up until a small spark was enough to trigger the explosion.

Let us also remember another common source of bad moods. These are the various states of fear, anxiety, and unnecessary worries.

Whenever someone falls into abnormal fear, their friends try to reason with them, advising them to use their logic and abandon their fear. But how can we ask someone to resist when they are fighting in the dark? How can we ask them not to be afraid when the thing they fear is only a symbol of what they actually fear?

Instead of lengthy reasoning, a few simple words are often much more helpful, such as: Straighten your spine! Don’t be afraid! Stand firm! Chin up! This too shall pass!

In other situations, we make our work easier when we manage to uncover the hidden causes of unnecessary fears and when we realize what is the true foundation of those anxieties. Such understanding, in and of itself, is often the best remedy. The roots hidden in the subconscious often wither immediately once they come to the surface of awareness.

If, for example, someone’s sexual instinct has been aroused to a certain degree and then suppressed, it activates glands that are associated with fear. However, only anxiety or dread of some misfortune enters consciousness, as if the person were to stepping down onto a non-existent stair in the dark. At the same time, it is possible to trace a peculiar inner conflict, which the individual may not immediately recognize, and which manifests as the repressed instinct resurfacing and provoking a dual, mutually opposing fear: on the one hand, fear of what might happen if it were satisfied, and on the other, fear of what will happen if it is not satisfied. The more the instinct pushes to the surface, the greater the opposing tension, which intensifies until it discharges as fear. This fear, however, can take on a tangible form, such as a headache, brooding, sullenness, or other manifestations. However, if the person has learned to sublimate or refine their instinct, transforming it into a higher, more elevated level, they need not suffer under its pressure, even if the instinct remains unsatisfied in its primitive form.

Abnormal fear, no matter how much it may seem to be directed at something outside us, is always, in its essence, fear of something within us. Every excessive fear is closely linked to a desire that is in conflict with our moral sense or our personality as a whole.

A certain twenty-year-old young man accused himself of being the robber who, at the age of 12, broke into a certain shop and killed the owner. Such a murder did indeed occur, and the perpetrator was never caught, but no one in the world was less guilty of the murder than that quiet, shy, gentle twenty-year-old young man. How could such self-accusation arise and drive him to madness?

The cause was a suppressed desire to excel in something. It was a repressed instinct for some kind of heroism, for self-assertion, which ultimately chose such an inappropriate expression that the young man preferred to be thought of as a robber rather than as a completely unknown person.

Any desire and any instinct can burden us only as long as we attribute some justification to them, as long as we favour them, even when we know they are in conflict with the better side of our personality.

We are not entirely uninvolved in what happens in our subconscious. The moon always turns only its illuminated half toward us, but the unlit half moves along with it and also influences the tides of the sea. The unlit side of the moon resembles the subconscious, and we cannot escape responsibility for its activity.

These need not be evil or impure instincts seeking to express themselves. We are not created for extravagances. But if we remain serious, rigid, and sad for too long, internal pressure will undoubtedly build over time and cause a deviation in the opposite direction. Those who do not understand themselves often bear this very heavily.

We have an example in children. If we take into account their childish nature and allow them freedom that permits innocent adventures, we need not fear so much that they might surprise us with undesirable adventures. Humans do not love monotony. From time to time, they need some lively change.

Since time immemorial, humans have displayed these tendencies. Primitive peoples sometimes hold their wild nighttime dances. Latin nations hold their street masquerades. Americans, a nation otherwise quiet and industrious, have their special days during which we would not recognize America. Noise, shouting, and shooting in the streets, throwing roses and ribbons! The most peculiar groups appear in disguise. An elegant lady dressed fashionably walks down the street with a cowbell tied to her foot. A man of dignified appearance makes a racket with a rattle so loud that one’s ears are ringing. Long artificial noses and clown hats are very common. Also, there are allegorical floats or entire parades of masqueraders.

Whoever understands the psychology of individuals and crowds and has a higher ethical awareness will prefer to see such occasional displays rather than our endless irritation over nothing.

And just as whole nations have their ways of breaking through the dam of everyday monotony, so do individuals. Everyone occasionally needs to do something unusual. How such an outburst will look depends on our awareness, character, conscience, and also on other influences rooted in the subconscious and on how well we can control them.

Among the least appropriate ways people sometimes break through the wall of monotony are anger and grumpiness of every kind. There are people who from time to time must argue with someone or insult someone thoroughly, leaving not a single shred of goodness in them. All of this comes from the same source.

Between alcoholism and hypersensitivity, there is more similarity than one might notice at first glance. Chronic alcoholism has the same origin as chronic anxiety or irritability. One bathes in alcohol, the other intoxicates themselves with poisoned emotions. After drunkenness, there is a headache and regret, just like after an outburst of anger or crying.

Everyone chooses their way of discharging emotions. I only admit one thing to anyone who claims they did not choose their way of discharging emotions: that they did not choose it consciously. Whenever a passion arises that we cannot control, it corresponds to some subconscious part of our personality, which chooses and decides the method of discharging; and this is what we wish to avoid, this is where we want to re-educate ourselves. We desire that always and in everything, and especially regarding our moods, we decide consciously with the better, higher, divine part of our personality.

We can choose our mood. So let us choose a cheerful mood, let us discharge our emotions in singing, in smiling, and in overcoming all sorts of nonsense that would provoke our old, subconscious, anger-prone depths into explosions.

If we have lived sufficient amount of time expressing a cheerful, joyful, hopeful, kind, and smiling mood, if we have often enough done things that other people are not yet used to doing, if we have often enough trained ourselves in directing our mood positively, we can be certain that there will be no room for grumpiness and fears, nor for emotional outbursts, to manifest themselves.

Our emotions and passions, our mood-driven forces, are like the sea upon which ships sail. The sea is sometimes calm, sometimes stormy, but this does not determine the direction the ships take. In the old days, storms at sea foretold disaster. Today, even during a storm, cheerful music and songs play on a modern ship, and the helmsman steers the ship with confidence and calm. This modern ship resembles a person who has become the master of their subconscious and their moods.