“Are you learning something?” Fr. Romuald D’Souza, the late Founder of the M.A. in Wellness Counselling course at Nirmala Institute of Education, cemented in my head this simple yet valuable question, way back when I had the honour of being his student. If you are someone who has studied psychology or even just has an interest in the field that is not necessarily academic in nature, you must have come across a number of disorders and diagnoses that the field offers. Personality disorders, anxiety disorders, neurological conditions—you name it, and the field of psychology most likely has it. And this is a very good thing! Why? Well, because without these, none of us would know what is wrong with us, would we?
If psychology hadn’t developed the way it did, we wouldn’t know why our moods are off sometimes. Or why do some of our most painful memories, which we otherwise push to the back of our minds, continue to appear in our dreams? We wouldn’t even have any idea about basic things like why some people are more extraverted than others. So yeah, we have psychology to thank for all this knowledge. But the downside of digging into every problem, of having a name for every condition, of finding out what’s wrong with us, is that now that is all we care about—finding out what is wrong. And this need to find out what is wrong has spiralled out of control in each one of us and as such, in the society that we have created. So much so that it has become our default response to any situation.
My kid keeps getting low marks in science; is there something wrong with my kid? My childhood friends now have no time for me; maybe there’s something wrong with me. I checked my Instagram today, and it turns out everyone is living their life while I’m stuck doing boring stuff like buying groceries; there has to be something wrong with me! Oh, I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, and it looks like my arms have gotten thicker; what the hell is wrong with my body!?
Just think about it: how many times have you found your mind going gaga over these ‘wrong’ thoughts? I bet one too many times. And what good has this done for you? Has it improved your quality of life and relationships? Or made you feel better about yourself? Have these ‘wrong’ related thoughts helped you sleep better at night? But that doesn’t stop us from having these thoughts anyway, and that is because of how hell-bent our society is on finding out where the problem lies.
In times like that, this question, “Are you learning something?” can really work wonders. This question, in the simplest way possible, encompasses the entirety of the wellness paradigm. It forces us to shift our attention from what is wrong to finding out what might be right. And if there is nothing right in the situation in which we are placed, it empowers us to create that right for ourselves. It mobilises us to make life happen for us instead of allowing life to happen to us. This one question gives us the right to choose our own lessons, our own perspective. It awards us the dignity of action—a luxury that is lost to someone who is so full of wrongs.
In the most difficult situations, if we learn to ask ourselves, “Am I learning something?” then we don’t have to be stuck in an endless loop of despair and misery. Instead, you get the opportunity to look for and forge lessons that you can learn from despite all that has gone down. So instead of asking, “Is there something wrong with my kid?” you can switch to, “Is my kid’s progress an indicator of something?” Instead of, “Maybe there’s something wrong with me,” you can change to, “What is this new dynamic telling me about the age and stage of life I’m in?” and just like that you’ll see, it’s really not that hard.
But does this mean you need to have problems and bad things happening in your life for learning to occur? Of course not! The good that we stumble upon offers equal opportunity for learning. However, it all ultimately depends on whether we are open to learning or not. So to wind up let me ask you; whatever your current position in life may be, “Are you learning something?”