by Nathan Chua
As I write this post, there is trepidation about the future given the situation we find ourselves in, as we are mired in a brutal, endless pandemic, and a perpetual and rigid lockdown response; and to add to that, certain groups wanting to take advantage of the weakness of others as they occupy territories that deprive small fisher folks of their sole livelihood, while simultaneously putting the region on the precipice of war, just because one group cannot stand the independence of another; I must admit that sometimes I begin to lose hope that change for a better human race and planet can ever be attainable.
I thought maybe it would be good to write about why One Life Only exists and why we should even care about change, given the bleak nature of our current circumstances. My optimism comes from a firm belief that humans are capable of making the hard choices in the service of the greater good. Given the right circumstances, we are able to do acts that our very pragmatic, my-personal-survival-first minds cannot comprehend.
I was neither skeptical nor exuberant about finding the best means for change in my life through psychology. I took an undergraduate degree in psychology plainly for the reason that I wanted to understand why I was who I was. I then turned to several other paths that for me, ultimately proved ineffectual. I thought then that I would find the answers in my mind, and that a logical and mathematical mind would save me from my problems in living. If I could figure it out then I can see the change sooner rather than later. Maybe I needed to be smarter and more informed. But all that knowledge of how to accomplish my material and culturally-acceptable goals, actually made me even worse!
The next step in my life was to turn towards the divine. I saw how people in church seemed to have it all together as I met them in the course of my young career as a businessman. Alas, it had a ceiling. Change was for the most part, superficially based on a hope that I found something that had held life’s truths, and the most plausible explanations for my existence.
I never thought that science would have a path for me towards improving who I can become. Science seemed to have this cold calculating aura for me. Further still, I never thought that psychology would ever be a true science. I pursued the path left by Freud and existential philosophy to find the answers. I never gave behaviorism a second look. I didn’t want to associate myself with a group of people who think that humans are just as trainable as animals!
But lo and behold, I found the answers in precisely this last option. Who knows? There could be better answers out there in the future, but for now, the science of behavior has given me fresh wind. So I have come full circle to psychology, but this time not the artsy type, but the sciency type.
I must add though that throughout the course of my search for the truths of our existence, I had one thing undergirding all of my efforts. I always had that instinct that most of it had to do with love. In my twenties and thirties, I thought that I should love my business and the people who helped me build it. In my journey through religion, I said love trumps doctrine. In my study of psychology, I loved the artsy parts, but never loved science, until I found it in a lesser known approach in behavioral science called, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT.
Here’s how the developer of ACT has framed it, or here’s how science can be an exercise in love.
“Humanity is in a race, a race to create a kinder, more flexible and values-based world–to say it another way, a more loving world…Either we will learn how to create modern minds for this modern world of ours, or we will loom ever closer to disaster.
None of us knows how it will turn out, but based on human history, I put my bet on the human community evolving to meet the challenge. I put my bet on our capacity to choose love over fear…Deep down, we all know that love isn’t everything, it’s the only thing,” Steven C. Hayes.
If there is one thing that can save the world, at the moment, it is science. And it happens to be a science of love that can ensure that the human species will continue to prosper and preserve the wonders of this planet.
Perhaps that is what truly brought me to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. For in love, there has to be genuine acceptance and a stubborn commitment to do what our logical minds would never understand. In ACT, I think I found the science behind love, the only thing that matters, which I just found out, not just for me, but for everybody else.
Happy 12th One Life Only!
