March 13, 2023 • 37 mins
In Virgil's epic poem, The Aeneid, few Trojans survive the destruction of their city at the hands of their Greek enemies. A prince, Aeneas, leads a band of those fleeing Troy - but the journey is fraught with deadly storms and hungry monsters.
But Aeneas takes a positive view of the struggles he and the other Trojans face, telling them to be proud of their resilience and courage. With the help of MIT classics professor Stephanie Frampton, Dr Laurie Santos explores how The Aeneid can be read as a tale of post-traumatic growth and how we can sometimes emerge happier and stronger from tragic events.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Wait you want version? Was it a New Year's party?
I'm asking my friend Mit classical literature professor Stephanie Frampton
to recall some ancient history. I've requested that she tell
(00:35):
her version of the story of how we first met
many many years ago. My memory is it was at
our friend's house off the shelf, you, Paul bend and
you're like, when I was in high school, I was
really good at Latin. So embarrassing, Okay, So it turns
(00:55):
out I was a huge nerd in high school, and
I was kind of obsessed with all things Latin. I
studied that ancient language for three whole years, and as
a senior, I spent an entire semester translating an important
Latin text, the Inid, by the famous Roman poet Virgil.
But I didn't just translate the Indid. I got kind
of obsessed with it, and being the type a seventeen
(01:18):
year old Latin scholar that I was, I, for some
strange reason, decided that there was one and only one
proper way to translate the first sentence of the Inid,
which in Latin is arma virum quai kano. Back then,
when some scholar or author translated Arma virum quai kano
in a way I didn't like. I kind of thought
a little less of them. I know your huss varies ends.
(01:44):
So when I first met Stephanie at that party many
years ago and heard that she was an expert on
the literature of ancient Rome, I couldn't help. But quiz her. Okay,
new friend, So how would you translate Arma virum quai
kano I sing of arms and of a man. I'm
into that. Technically the correct answer is I sing of
(02:06):
arms and a man, not I sing of arms and
of a man. But it's fine whatever. Stephanie still passed.
But what a great opening, right, I sing of arms
and a man. The Ania is about an armed struggle,
but it's more importantly about a man. A Eneas an
ancient hero who weathers great dangers and sorrows, a guy
who endures the worst possible tragedies a person can possibly
(02:29):
go through and somehow finds a way to grow from them.
And that's why I wanted to share virgil story with
you today, because Aeneas can offer us some important evidence
based tips for meeting the challenges that life throws our
way and resiliently rising above them, and that makes Eneas
a fitting fictional subject or yet another episode of happiness
(02:49):
Lessons of the Ancients with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. Virgil
is everyone's favorite Roman poet, and he becomes sort of
the first superstar poet in the Roman world. We last
heard from my friend classics experts Stephanie Rampton when we
(03:09):
talked about the happiness lessons we can derive from the
great Greek poet Homer. I like to think of the
Inid as the best fan fiction there is of Homer.
Homer was a towering figure in ancient literature, and Virgil,
who lived hundreds of years after Homer, found lots of
inspiration at his work. In fact, Virgil liked Homer's epics
so much that he gave them a reboot with a
(03:30):
Roman twist. Virgil rewrites those for his hero a Eneas.
Aeneas was a kind of minor character in Homer's original epics,
but Virgil put him at the center of the action.
And that's because, at least according to some legends, Annius
wasn't just some nobody. He was the guy who would
eventually found Rome. Well, that's what the Romans say, the
Greeks didn't care that much about that side of things.
(03:54):
And so here's the simplified version of Virgil's Enid. It
starts at the tail end of a royal love triangle,
one that's so bad it results in an epic war
that destroys an entire ancient city, famous Troy. It's the
site of a great battle between two great ancient peoples,
the Trojans and the Greeks, who have come on mass
(04:15):
to get back Helen because she's the wife of Menelaias.
This is the very famous Helen of Troy, indeed, or
alternately Helen of Sparta because she's the wife of Menelaus.
The Trojan prince Paris comes along and she decides to
leave her Greek husband Menelaias and go back to Troy
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with Paris, which probably didn't make the Spartans all too happy,
not at all. And the Spartans kind of rally together
all of the ancient Greek peoples and they sail across
the sea to Troy and set siege to the city
to try to get Helen back. No spoilers, but how
does it go for the Trojans? Doesn't go well for
the Trojans. You might remember how the Greeks sneak their
(04:57):
way into Troy. They pretend to call off the siege
and leave the Trojans with what seems like an odd, yeah,
ever so kind parting gift, a huge wooden horse. The
Trojans wheel their strange present inside the city these high walls,
never guessing that there were legions of Greek warriors hiding inside,
just waiting to spring out for a surprise attack. Who
(05:18):
could unfold in speech that night's havoc? Who it's carnage?
Who could match our toils with tears? The ancient city
falls for many years, a queen in heaps. Lifeless corpses
lie scattered amidst the streets, amid the homes, and hollowed
portals of the gods. Everywhere is cruel, grief everywhere, panic
(05:43):
and full many a shape of death. The attack was
so vicious that Virgil's hero Eneus is one of the
only Trojans to escape the city was completely raised by
the Greeks. All of his fellow Trojan princes were dead
or captured. He leaves his hometown in complete ruin and
(06:05):
sort of burning around him. He loses his wife in
the escape, he manages to get away with only a
few of his men, his father, his son. They hop
on a boat and are blown around the Mediterranean. They're
nearly shipwrecked many times. They are attacked by monsters and
(06:29):
have an encounter with the Cyclops, who tries to eat them,
amongst other things. So it was pretty bad. Yeah, it sucked.
Encountering the Cyclops is majorly bad news. Here's the gory
picture that Virgil paints of one of those giant one
eyed cannibals. He feeds on the flesh of wretched men,
(06:49):
and they're dark blood. I myself saw when he seized
in his huge and two of our company and smashed
them on the rock, and the spattered courts swam with gore.
I watched while he devoured their limbs, all dripping with
black blood cloths, and the warm joints quivered beneath his teeth.
(07:19):
Remember when Stephanie described The Indian as the best Homer
fan fiction ever, that's in part because Virgil continually succeeded
in outdoing his predecessor in terms of the hardships he
sprang on his poor hero. Consider, for example, how Virgil's
Aeneid goes next level on what happens to Homer's epic
hero Odysseus. The cyclops we know from the Odyssey is
(07:42):
a very dangerous creature who likes to eat men. In
the Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are attacked by one
and they barely survive. And Virgil does homer one up
and has Aneas's men attacked by a whole mob of cyclopses,
and they barely get back onto their ships and sail away.
(08:03):
So why did Virgil choose to give poor Aeneas so
many extreme trials and tribulations. The reason had to do
with who Virgil was writing for, his fellow Romans. The
men of Virgil's time hadn't exactly been chased by man
eating giants, but they had been through decades and decades
of bloodshed. It is the end of a century of
(08:23):
constant warfare and in fighting. It's the period of Caesar
and the civil wars following Caesar's rise to power. Like Eneas,
many Romans had lost their homes and their loved ones.
They'd felt a sense of collective loss for generations, a
feeling that Eneas's creator, Virgil, had also known firsthand. Part
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of the background of his story is in this period
of strife and civil war, his homeland, his property gets
confiscated as part of payments to soldiers for civil war, etc. Etc.
So he kind of has this chip on his shoulder
a little bit about what's come before and feeling like
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it was all a little bit unfair. Virgil and his
fellow aramatized Roman citizens closely identified with the tragedies that
befell Enius, but they also really admired how Eneas made
it through all those tragedies because in the end, Annius
didn't lose his home and endure countless monster attacks for nothing.
Aeneas's tale is a redemption story, one that came with
a huge sense of purpose and meaning. In spite of
(09:28):
all his losses, Eneas was faded to become the man
who had found Rome. Yeah, his journey did suck, but
Eneas was set to achieve so much after all his
trials and tribulations. With that tale of redemption, Virgil was
able to hold up a mirror to his fellow Romans.
He was reminding them, Yeah, you've had some tough times,
but you survived, and now it's time to flourish once again.
(09:50):
It was a message that especially resonated around the time
The Indian was written, as Rome's new emperor, Augustus, was
taking the throne. Augustus is Caesar's great nephew and heir
and finally sort of gets to be the main guy
in charge of Rome and starts a period of kind
(10:13):
of relative stability, and Virgil's poem as in some way
a celebration of that. But the ancient Romans aren't the
only ones who can learn from Virgil's epic celebration of
growth through suffering. When we get back from the break,
we'll hear about what modern readers can learn from Aeneas's
ancient redemption story. We'll learn that Aeneas uses a special
psychological technique that helps him and his men overcome their pain,
(10:36):
a strategy that science shows we should probably all be
using when we find ourselves going through a tough time
and want to feel better. We'll hear more about this
effective ancient resilience technique when the Happiness lad returns in
a moment. It's the most successful poem in the history
(11:00):
of European languages. Arguably sounds free impressive. Yeah like me.
A Professor Stephanie Frampton is a big advocate of Virgil's
epic the Eneid and the role that can play in
helping us to understand the psychology of resilience. It's known
as the best poem in the best language. Obviously, Homer,
(11:24):
the Iliad, the Odyssey have a huge impact and are read,
but Greek isn't as prominent a language in the sort
of subsequent history of Europe for all sorts of reasons,
mostly because of the Catholic Church. Latin is a language
that's spoken in Europe actively from the first millennium BC
(11:45):
through the eighteenth century through nineteen nineties New Bedford High School. Yeah,
when I first read the Indiad as a teenager, I
was struck by how well the poem's hero Eneas was
able to rise above the terrible tragedies he endured, which
was no small fee, since the poet Virgil didn't shy
(12:05):
away from sending terrible stuff. Enius's way. To quote my
own high school translation of Virgil, Aeneas was much buffeted
by the winds of fate. I mean, the dude lost
his wife and his homeland, He was trapped in numerous
deadly squalls at sea. He even had to face a
rabid cyclops mob. But what I was most impressed by
is the fact that Eneas didn't shy away from all
(12:26):
the bad stuff or try to suppress what he went through. No,
he kind of relished focusing on it. Take for example,
what happened soon after Eneas and his men crash onto
the coast of Carthage after enduring a terrible storm. They've
been shipwrecked, They've found themselves on the shores of this
strange land. Eneas and his men were soon welcomed by
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this strange land's residence as well as their queen, Dido.
Dido wanted to be hospitable, so she invited the Trojans
to a big feast, the first great meal Aeneas's men
had had in months. That's the first time that they
have found a place where they feel like maybe they
can be a little safe for a moment and reflect.
(13:08):
At the celebration, the queen asks Nias to tell the
story of how he and his men wound up shipwrecked
on the beach outside their city. And at this point
Eneas could have tried to do the polite thing, you know,
share a few vague particulars about what happened, but not
get into too many of the unpleasant details, as that
probably would have ruined the celebratory mood. But that's not
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what Eneas did. Too deep for words, Oh Queen, is
the grief you bid me renew? How the Greeks overthrew
Troy's wealth and woe for relm the sights most piteous
that I saw myself, and wherein I played no small role.
Annias really went there. He spent an entire chapter of
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the poem walking through the terrible, sordid, gory details of
literally every single bad thing he and his men went through,
and he has recalls the moments when he's leaving Troy,
with the city burning around him, he puts his father
on his back to carry him out of the city.
He grabs his son's hand and has him follow it
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along at his side. Enias describes turning back and sort
of seeing his wife has gone missing. He's lost her
in the melee, and he goes to the ships and
tries to sort of rally some of his men together
and flee on the water. Such words he spoke while
sick with deep distress. He feigns hope on his face
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and deep in his heart stifles his anguish. Enias didn't
downplay any of the trauma he experienced. He described it
in as much detail and with as much candor as
he could, which didn't make for a very pleasant dinner
party conversation. Many of us would choose not to be
as open as a Enias was in discussing the negative
experience as we've endured, we'd probably assume that none of
(15:02):
our friends wanted to hear about all our drama. We
might figure that talking about our tragedies would likely make
us feel worse. But the science shows that this is
a spot where our minds are lying to us, because
tons of evidence suggests that disclosing our personal tragedies openly
might be an important first step towards actually healing them.
Years ago, I came across an interesting finding that people
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who had had a major traumatic experience when they were
young were much more likely to have long term health problems.
This is Jamie Pennybaker, a professor of psychology at UT Austin.
Jamie has been a guest on the Happiness Lab before
to share his work on the importance of talking candidly
about our bad times. I later discovered it was because
people kept it secret. That they still were thinking about it,
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but they were keeping it secret because it was humiliating
to acknowledge it. And we found that when people were
asked to write about a deeply troubling traumatic experience or
upsetting experience that they hadn't talked to other people about,
that it was associated with better physical health. That people
went to the doctor last, their immune system got better.
So that was how I've become so intrigued with this
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notion that if you have something that's bad and you
don't want to talk about it, you probably should think
about talking about it, or at least writing about it.
He's spoken to Holocaust survivors about sharing their harrowing life stories,
and he's also had college students write down their upsetting memories.
His research shows that talking in detail with someone you
trust about unpleasant events, or even just jotting them down
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on paper, can have a surprisingly positive impact. There are
easily one or two thousand studies that have been done
since then. Across these studies, it's been associated with reductions
and symptoms of depression and post traumatic stress disorder. It's
been associated with people performing better on creative tasks, doing
better on standardized tests like SATs or MCATs people they
(16:55):
report being happier, they're mentally healthier, and the biological markers
have been quite impressive in terms of changes in terms
of improvements and symptoms of arthritis and immune disorders and
cardiovascular changes and so forth. There's a decent chance it'll
be associated with your sleeping better, that you'll be able
to get along with other people better. You're able to
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get through upsetting experiences the way that we often don't
if we are sitting quietly and mulling over these issues
in our minds. Jamie has found that trying to suppress
our bad memories puts a huge cognitive strain on our brains.
Our minds simply don't react well when we tell them, hey,
this thought is kind of sad. Well, let's not think
about it anymore. And that means that opening up about
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our trauma, whether to a caring friend or just in
a private journal, can be a huge psychological relief, one
that comes with all the health and happiness benefits that
Jamie just mentioned. But Jamie has found that there's also
a second reason that openly sharing upsetting stories is beneficial
for us. By putting an upsetting experience into words, It
forces structure, it forces an organization. There's a beginning, middle,
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and end. It's not blowing off steam. It's not some
kind of venting or catharsis. Instead, you are coming to
understand the event and also yourself better. When Aeneas flooded
his fellow dinner guests with the sad details about losing
his beloved city and fleeing from a horde of hungry cyclopses,
he wasn't just complaining. He was giving his mind an
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effective way to make sense of the dangers his men faced.
Talking about those tragic events allowed Eneas to more carefully
examined the bravery and skill that he and his men
showed during those tough times. It gave him a chance
to reflect on what he learned from all that adversity.
And this is something that I find interesting about adversity.
Having the thing that's negative certainly sucks, but by the
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same token, it has the potential to be healing in
to make us rethink ourselves and rethink our lives. Classic
scholar Stephanie Frampton thinks that this is an insight that
Virgil nicely put into effect in one of my favorite
passages of the Indian the spot where Aeneas speaks to
his men directly about what overcoming so much adversity can
mean for their success in the future. Oh, comrades, for this,
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we have not been ignorant of misfortune. You who have
suffered worse. This also, God will end. You drew near
to Skyla's fury and her deep echoing crags. You have
known too the rocks of the cyclops. Recall your courage
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and banish sad fear. Perhaps even this distress it will
someday be a joy to recall, he says, Recall your
courage and banish fear. That expression, recall your courage, I
think in this context is really interesting. The words in
Latin are ray wocte animos, so call back literally call
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it again to yourself, your animos, your spirit. It means
both recall as in call it back to mind, but
it means also have that spirit again, like use it again.
So it points in both directions. Right, it's memory that's
working to contextualize their present situation. It's memory that's working
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to give them courage now, and it's courage now that
will give them strength for the future. It's like you're
using the past in a particular story about the past
to remind yourself, Hey, I got through this before, I
was resilient before, I can do it again. So you're
like literally using stories about the past to recall something
really important that you need right now or in the future.
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And we can also think that Virgil is doing this
too for himself. Right He's saying, Romans, remember what you've
been through. It is the strength that you need now
to go forward. It's part of why the book was
so embraced when it originally appeared. It had this ripple
effect of saying, if a Eneas's sacrifices were worth it
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for him to get here for us, than our sacrifices
are also may be worth it for us to get
to a better place. But Aeneas didn't just tell his
comrades to recall their courage in that famous passage. He
also gave them an optimistic framework for how to think
about and reflect on those sad times in the future.
He says, perhaps it will someday even be a pleasure
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to remember these things when we get back from the break.
We'll look at this aspect of virgil psychological insight that
with an optimistic perspective, we can begin to see our
past sorrows not as tragedies but as blessings, ones that
allow us to grow as people. We'll see that Eneas
is an ancient example of what modern psychologists refer to
(21:48):
as post traumatic growth. We'll learn what post traumatic growth
is and why this concept can be so essential for
feeling resilient during bad times. The Happiness Lab will be
right back. Through varied fortunes, through countless meds, we journey
(22:11):
towards Ladium, where Fate promises a home of peace. As
Aeneas helps his men process they're still fresh memories of
the sacking of Troy and their horrific escape across the sea,
he stays focused not just on all the trauma they endured,
but also on their brighter, better future. Aeneas reminds his
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men that in spite of all they've been through, they're
still headed for Latium, where Rome stands today, in the
hopes of fulfilling their destiny of founding a great new city.
In this way, Eneas focuses not just on the past, which,
as we learned before, can help him process the grief
he's been through, but also on the future and all
the prosperity it might bring. Aeneas's tendency to keep an
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optimistic eye on what's to come was best illustrated in
a pivotal passage in the Inid in which he takes
a journey to the land of the Dead and gets
to see visions of just how amazing the empire he's
about to found will turn out. For this, the kind
of foundational moment is in book six, when he goes
and visits the underworld, and not only does he see
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his father, who's died at that point, but he also
sees all of Romans to come, including Augustus and his family.
Turn hither, now, your two eyed gaze, and behold this nation,
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the Romans that are yours. Here is Caesar, and all
the seed of Lullus, destined to pass under Heaven's spacious sphere.
And this, in truth is he whom you so often
here promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a God, who
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will again establish a golden age in Ladium amid fields.
Once ruled by Saturn. He will advance his empire beyond
the Garriments and India to a land which lies beyond
our stars. If he kind of gets this preview of
like all the awesome stuff to come exactly. And it's like,
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because of this, because of what you're going through, we
get to have the realm of today. So the Aeniad
is kind of this incredible story, right. It's aneas this
dude who's like fleeing from his homeland with his old
dad on his back and like trying to grab his
kid before everything burns to rubble. But ultimately it's the
story of the founding of the most important empire ever.
(24:42):
And so it's kind of this like trauma turn to
growth sort of story. And I think that's one of
the reasons I really enjoy it still to this day
is it's kind of like the Roman poetry version of
what psychologists talk about when they talk about post traumatic growth.
Post Traumatic growth is a phenomenon that psychologists have become
more and more interested in. Now you've probably already heard
(25:03):
about a related concept, what's known as post traumatic stress
or PTSD. PTSD is a mental disorder that arises after
people have gone through trauma or other terrible life events.
But scientists have begun to realize that trauma doesn't always
only result in long term emotional distress. Survivors sometimes show
the opposite pattern. After growing through painful life events, people
(25:25):
wind up experiencing a host of positive psychological changes. We
know that trauma can lead to long term stress and
negative symptoms, but there's also evidence that it can be
a fertile ground for discovering new relationships, for harness and courage,
and for finding a sense of meaning. This sweet of
positive outcomes after trauma is what researchers have begun calling
post traumatic growth. The academic concept of post traumatic growth
(25:49):
is relatively new, but it's pretty clear that ancient poets
like Virgil understood it. You find more resilience, you find
a bigger sense of meaning. You think that because you've
made it through this trauma of the world has something
important for you to do. I mean, is that kind
of the way the poem was thought about back in
the day. Absolutely, And it's really as to the trauma
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that Rome has gone through for the last hundred years
in their civil wars. It's an idea that if Eneas
can get through this, that we all can get through
this together. We usually assume that upsetting life events have
to take a real toll on us, that traumatic circumstances
inevitably lead to negative effects that can last a lifetime.
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But research has shown that there are ways of processing
our bad life events that at least over time, can
help us move towards a sense of growth instead. But
what are some of these more effective ways of dealing
with bad life events. I can tell you right now
that what happened to me is a blessing. This is JR. Martinez.
But it took a lot of work for me to
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get to this point, almost sixteen years later, for me
to say this to you. Like the ancient fictional hero Eneas, Jr.
Was no stranger to the horrors of warfare and violence.
He served as a soldier in Iraq, and his life
changed in an instant when the vehicle he was driving
exploded when it was struck by roadside bomb. Jr. Was
eventually rescued, but he suffered horrific burns. These painful injuries
(27:16):
ended the then nineteen year old's military career and left
him scarred and disfigured for life. The identity that I
had known for nineteen years of my life, my physical appearance,
what I recognize for nineteen years of my life, every morning,
every evening, every day in between, when I looked in
the mirror, that identity is taken away from me, and
now I'm looking in the mirror and that person that
I see I do not recognize. I have no relationship
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with that individual, and having to come to terms with
accepting the fact that the person that I used to
be has died. That person's gone will never come back. Jr.
Suffered terribly after his accident and initially showed many of
the negative effects that come after experiencing trauma. I was drinking,
I was angry, I was reckless. I mean, I was
(27:57):
not pleasant to be around. I really wasn't. But the
tragedy of that bomb blast was also a pivotal moment
of change in Jr's life. It caused him to realize
that life was short and that he needed to prioritize
making the most of it. So, in spite of his scars,
he decided to follow his dream of becoming an actor.
He auditioned for a part in a soap opera and
got it. He eventually became a TV celebrity, a magazine
(28:21):
cover star, a motivational speaker, and an advocate for disabled veterans.
That's why he now describes getting blown up in Iraq
at nineteen years old as a blessing. I'm blessed to
have a second chance at life. I'm so passionate and
I have so much passion inside of me because I
don't want to take this second chance for granted. I
am trying to live at one hundred percent every single day.
(28:44):
You can hear more of JR. Story in a previous
episode of The Happiness Lab called The Unhappy Millionaire. But
I've included JR. Again in this episode because both he
and our ancient hero Aeneas are great examples of strategies
you can use to move towards post traumatic growth, and
one of those strategies involves trying to manage your emotional
distress as best you can. This was something that Anneus
(29:05):
did well, explicitly telling his men to make sure they
were regulating theirs. Oh comrades, for this, we have not
been ignorant of misfortune. You who have suffered worse, Recall
your courage and banish sad fear. Banish your fear, and
(29:26):
call back those good emotions, says in Us. But former
soldier JR. Martinez gives us a great method to do
just that. He found ways to experience gratitude for his
terrible ordeal. He spent his time intentionally noticing that things
could have been worse, considering the fact that I was
trapped inside of a burning truck for five minutes. I'm
fortunate to only have what I have. I have a
(29:46):
lot of friends, and I know a lot of people
that unfortunately have missing limbs, are more scarred, you know,
or disfigured. You know, you know, I to some degree,
I'm very lucky that my skin graphs and the burns
kind of blend in with my skin tone, so you know,
it's just in some ways it's not has noticeable oddly enough,
right like you know, so in that sense, incredibly fortunate.
(30:09):
But another psychologically effective strategy for getting through tough times
is finding ways to use your adversity to give back
by becoming more other oriented in the face of tragedy.
Annias did this by focusing on taking care of his
men and making sure they made good on the legacy
of their fallen Trojans and Jr. Did something similar. He
(30:29):
realized that he might be able to use his story
to help others, and I started to kind of piece
all this together and realize, wait a minute, there's all
of these lessons and things that I've dealt with that
everybody else is dealing with, So why maybe I can
do something with this? So JR. Became a motivational speaker,
sharing his painful story and the lessons he learned with
military veterans all over the world. He couldn't serve as
(30:51):
a soldier any longer, but he could still contribute something
meaningful to those around him. I can go out there
and serve in a different capacity because the new uniform
that I wear are the scars of my body, and
the new weapon that I have are the words that
come out of my mouth. And Gr's experience shows a
common benefit of post traumatic growth connect with others. After
initially feeling lonely and isolated following his burnt injuries, Jr.
(31:15):
Soon found that his ordeal increased his empathy for other people.
He also saw how much of a happiness boost he
could get from giving back to the people around him
and by sharing his story. JR. Used a final strategy
that can help us grow from suffering. He was able
to find meaning in what he went through. If you've
been through a tough hardship, you can ask yourself what
you learn and what new meeting those events have brought
(31:37):
to your life. It took JR. A while to do this,
but he eventually saw that his brush with death was
a way to achieve a fuller life that he couldn't
have ever imagined before he was burned. Over the course
of my life, there have been a lot of things
that I've experienced that didn't make sense in the moment.
But if you stick with it, if you're patient enough
over the course of time, the answer then presents itself
(31:59):
everything I thought I wanted in life. You know, I
wanted to be a fresh professional football player and have
fame and have all this money and be able to
do all these things. Like if I would have accomplish
those things, would I be as happy as I am now?
I've helped a lot of people, at least I believe
I would be able to make a difference, And I
think that to me is more important than anything else.
(32:21):
And this brings us back to Virgil's hero Eneus, who
spoiler alert, faces even more challenges and bereavements as he
continues his quest to found Rome, but he does so
with the knowledge that he's fulfilling a meaningful mission that
glorious Rome extend her empire to Earth's ends her ambitions
(32:42):
to the skies. What's more meaningful than, you know, picking
up your fallen empire to create this new world, to
create a new home for yourself and the people you
care about. Yeah, and what Virgil is trying to do
with the poem. Virgil gives us a hero that has
been through a lot of sadness but is endeavoring to
(33:04):
kind of move forward. It's certainly a story that I
think resonates with readers today. It certainly resonates with my students,
the sense that they have a goal that they're trying
to get to. Eneas is trying to get to Rome.
My students are trying to graduate from MiG Neither of
(33:25):
these things is easy, and they have to make sacrifices
along the way and make choices that sometimes looking back on,
you know they have that sort of reflective self. There
are maybe which things have gone differently, But the sense
of kind of moving forward and having a backward glance
(33:47):
as part of that is I think really important to
the way that Eneas, the Romans, we all can create meaning.
Returning to the story of Enius always reminds me that
even after experiencing the worst of times, there are strategies
we can use to control our situation. We can call
back our courage and use strategies to regulate the painful
(34:09):
emotions that come with negative events. We can find ways
to use what we've been through to help other people.
And we can harness the power of sharing stories and
disclosing our bad memories to process and learn from what
we've gone through. And remember, telling your story doesn't mean
you have to share your woes with some unsuspecting dinner
party like Eneas did. You can follow the lead of
(34:30):
psychologists Jamie Penny Baker's college students and get all the
benefits that come from journaling about your tough times privately.
But the key is that you use that process to
identify what Eneas and JR. Martinez both found after their
awful ordeals, that if you look carefully, you can find
meaning in your painful stories, and that sense of purpose
can lead to growth and making good on This idea
(34:53):
of meaning making is how I wanted to end this
episode today, because chatting with Stephanie about Virgil did take
me back to our awkward first meeting when I somewhat
aggressively quizzed her about her Enia translation that obviously wasn't
a hugely traumatic event, no cyclops mobbing as it were,
but it still presents the opportunity to use the power
of stories and meaning making to put things right. So
(35:16):
just realizing the power of going back to stories that
at the time were a little bit painful. You know
where I'm going with this. I'm sorry I was so
mean about you. Weren't I was a little bit mean,
But it can be a sort of redemptive story that
even though absolutely it's drawn us together all of these years.
(35:37):
It's something we've talked about and laughed about many, many times.
And I wish I could go back to fifteen years
ago Laurie and Stephanie and tell her, you guys are
fighting about the beginning of the INDID. It's a silly
dinner party. But fifteen years later, you're going to be
on a podcast. I would have to explained what a
podcast is at that point. But you're gonna be on
a podcast, and you're gonna be able to share the
(35:57):
INDID with the whole world. It's amazing. Huge thanks to
my friend Stephanie Frampton for sharing all her wisdom about
some of my favorite ancient mythological heroes. It's now a
time for the season of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients
to leave the shores of Greece and Rome and to
head east to South Asia, where we'll be examining the
(36:18):
happiness insights we can find in the yoga sutras. The
sutras are just the truth, so they're the truth of
the human experience and they can be applied in different
ways depending on what's going on in your life, and
the only things that will resonate from the sutras are
the things that you already know to be true with
(36:39):
it yourself. I hope to see you next week for
the latest edition of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients on
the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness
Lab is co written by Ryan Dilley and is produced
by Ryan Dilley, Courtney Guerino and Britney Brown. The show
(37:01):
was mastered by Evan Viola and our original music was
composed by Zachary Silver. You also heard the voice talents
of David Glover special thanks to Greta Kone, Eric Sandler,
Carly mcgliori, Nicole Morano, Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, My agent
Ben Davis, and the rest of the Pushkin team. The
Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
by me, doctor Laurie Santos.
Pushkin, Wait you want version? Was it a New Year's party?
I'm asking my friend Mit classical literature professor Stephanie Frampton
to recall some ancient history. I've requested that she tell
(00:35):
her version of the story of how we first met
many many years ago. My memory is it was at
our friend's house off the shelf, you, Paul bend and
you're like, when I was in high school, I was
really good at Latin. So embarrassing, Okay, So it turns
(00:55):
out I was a huge nerd in high school, and
I was kind of obsessed with all things Latin. I
studied that ancient language for three whole years, and as
a senior, I spent an entire semester translating an important
Latin text, the Inid, by the famous Roman poet Virgil.
But I didn't just translate the Indid. I got kind
of obsessed with it, and being the type a seventeen
(01:18):
year old Latin scholar that I was, I, for some
strange reason, decided that there was one and only one
proper way to translate the first sentence of the Inid,
which in Latin is arma virum quai kano. Back then,
when some scholar or author translated Arma virum quai kano
in a way I didn't like. I kind of thought
a little less of them. I know your huss varies ends.
(01:44):
So when I first met Stephanie at that party many
years ago and heard that she was an expert on
the literature of ancient Rome, I couldn't help. But quiz her. Okay,
new friend, So how would you translate Arma virum quai
kano I sing of arms and of a man. I'm
into that. Technically the correct answer is I sing of
(02:06):
arms and a man, not I sing of arms and
of a man. But it's fine whatever. Stephanie still passed.
But what a great opening, right, I sing of arms
and a man. The Ania is about an armed struggle,
but it's more importantly about a man. A Eneas an
ancient hero who weathers great dangers and sorrows, a guy
who endures the worst possible tragedies a person can possibly
(02:29):
go through and somehow finds a way to grow from them.
And that's why I wanted to share virgil story with
you today, because Aeneas can offer us some important evidence
based tips for meeting the challenges that life throws our
way and resiliently rising above them, and that makes Eneas
a fitting fictional subject or yet another episode of happiness
(02:49):
Lessons of the Ancients with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. Virgil
is everyone's favorite Roman poet, and he becomes sort of
the first superstar poet in the Roman world. We last
heard from my friend classics experts Stephanie Rampton when we
(03:09):
talked about the happiness lessons we can derive from the
great Greek poet Homer. I like to think of the
Inid as the best fan fiction there is of Homer.
Homer was a towering figure in ancient literature, and Virgil,
who lived hundreds of years after Homer, found lots of
inspiration at his work. In fact, Virgil liked Homer's epics
so much that he gave them a reboot with a
(03:30):
Roman twist. Virgil rewrites those for his hero a Eneas.
Aeneas was a kind of minor character in Homer's original epics,
but Virgil put him at the center of the action.
And that's because, at least according to some legends, Annius
wasn't just some nobody. He was the guy who would
eventually found Rome. Well, that's what the Romans say, the
Greeks didn't care that much about that side of things.
(03:54):
And so here's the simplified version of Virgil's Enid. It
starts at the tail end of a royal love triangle,
one that's so bad it results in an epic war
that destroys an entire ancient city, famous Troy. It's the
site of a great battle between two great ancient peoples,
the Trojans and the Greeks, who have come on mass
(04:15):
to get back Helen because she's the wife of Menelaias.
This is the very famous Helen of Troy, indeed, or
alternately Helen of Sparta because she's the wife of Menelaus.
The Trojan prince Paris comes along and she decides to
leave her Greek husband Menelaias and go back to Troy
(04:35):
with Paris, which probably didn't make the Spartans all too happy,
not at all. And the Spartans kind of rally together
all of the ancient Greek peoples and they sail across
the sea to Troy and set siege to the city
to try to get Helen back. No spoilers, but how
does it go for the Trojans? Doesn't go well for
the Trojans. You might remember how the Greeks sneak their
(04:57):
way into Troy. They pretend to call off the siege
and leave the Trojans with what seems like an odd, yeah,
ever so kind parting gift, a huge wooden horse. The
Trojans wheel their strange present inside the city these high walls,
never guessing that there were legions of Greek warriors hiding inside,
just waiting to spring out for a surprise attack. Who
(05:18):
could unfold in speech that night's havoc? Who it's carnage?
Who could match our toils with tears? The ancient city
falls for many years, a queen in heaps. Lifeless corpses
lie scattered amidst the streets, amid the homes, and hollowed
portals of the gods. Everywhere is cruel, grief everywhere, panic
(05:43):
and full many a shape of death. The attack was
so vicious that Virgil's hero Eneus is one of the
only Trojans to escape the city was completely raised by
the Greeks. All of his fellow Trojan princes were dead
or captured. He leaves his hometown in complete ruin and
(06:05):
sort of burning around him. He loses his wife in
the escape, he manages to get away with only a
few of his men, his father, his son. They hop
on a boat and are blown around the Mediterranean. They're
nearly shipwrecked many times. They are attacked by monsters and
(06:29):
have an encounter with the Cyclops, who tries to eat them,
amongst other things. So it was pretty bad. Yeah, it sucked.
Encountering the Cyclops is majorly bad news. Here's the gory
picture that Virgil paints of one of those giant one
eyed cannibals. He feeds on the flesh of wretched men,
(06:49):
and they're dark blood. I myself saw when he seized
in his huge and two of our company and smashed
them on the rock, and the spattered courts swam with gore.
I watched while he devoured their limbs, all dripping with
black blood cloths, and the warm joints quivered beneath his teeth.
(07:19):
Remember when Stephanie described The Indian as the best Homer
fan fiction ever, that's in part because Virgil continually succeeded
in outdoing his predecessor in terms of the hardships he
sprang on his poor hero. Consider, for example, how Virgil's
Aeneid goes next level on what happens to Homer's epic
hero Odysseus. The cyclops we know from the Odyssey is
(07:42):
a very dangerous creature who likes to eat men. In
the Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are attacked by one
and they barely survive. And Virgil does homer one up
and has Aneas's men attacked by a whole mob of cyclopses,
and they barely get back onto their ships and sail away.
(08:03):
So why did Virgil choose to give poor Aeneas so
many extreme trials and tribulations. The reason had to do
with who Virgil was writing for, his fellow Romans. The
men of Virgil's time hadn't exactly been chased by man
eating giants, but they had been through decades and decades
of bloodshed. It is the end of a century of
(08:23):
constant warfare and in fighting. It's the period of Caesar
and the civil wars following Caesar's rise to power. Like Eneas,
many Romans had lost their homes and their loved ones.
They'd felt a sense of collective loss for generations, a
feeling that Eneas's creator, Virgil, had also known firsthand. Part
(08:45):
of the background of his story is in this period
of strife and civil war, his homeland, his property gets
confiscated as part of payments to soldiers for civil war, etc. Etc.
So he kind of has this chip on his shoulder
a little bit about what's come before and feeling like
(09:06):
it was all a little bit unfair. Virgil and his
fellow aramatized Roman citizens closely identified with the tragedies that
befell Enius, but they also really admired how Eneas made
it through all those tragedies because in the end, Annius
didn't lose his home and endure countless monster attacks for nothing.
Aeneas's tale is a redemption story, one that came with
a huge sense of purpose and meaning. In spite of
(09:28):
all his losses, Eneas was faded to become the man
who had found Rome. Yeah, his journey did suck, but
Eneas was set to achieve so much after all his
trials and tribulations. With that tale of redemption, Virgil was
able to hold up a mirror to his fellow Romans.
He was reminding them, Yeah, you've had some tough times,
but you survived, and now it's time to flourish once again.
(09:50):
It was a message that especially resonated around the time
The Indian was written, as Rome's new emperor, Augustus, was
taking the throne. Augustus is Caesar's great nephew and heir
and finally sort of gets to be the main guy
in charge of Rome and starts a period of kind
(10:13):
of relative stability, and Virgil's poem as in some way
a celebration of that. But the ancient Romans aren't the
only ones who can learn from Virgil's epic celebration of
growth through suffering. When we get back from the break,
we'll hear about what modern readers can learn from Aeneas's
ancient redemption story. We'll learn that Aeneas uses a special
psychological technique that helps him and his men overcome their pain,
(10:36):
a strategy that science shows we should probably all be
using when we find ourselves going through a tough time
and want to feel better. We'll hear more about this
effective ancient resilience technique when the Happiness lad returns in
a moment. It's the most successful poem in the history
(11:00):
of European languages. Arguably sounds free impressive. Yeah like me.
A Professor Stephanie Frampton is a big advocate of Virgil's
epic the Eneid and the role that can play in
helping us to understand the psychology of resilience. It's known
as the best poem in the best language. Obviously, Homer,
(11:24):
the Iliad, the Odyssey have a huge impact and are read,
but Greek isn't as prominent a language in the sort
of subsequent history of Europe for all sorts of reasons,
mostly because of the Catholic Church. Latin is a language
that's spoken in Europe actively from the first millennium BC
(11:45):
through the eighteenth century through nineteen nineties New Bedford High School. Yeah,
when I first read the Indiad as a teenager, I
was struck by how well the poem's hero Eneas was
able to rise above the terrible tragedies he endured, which
was no small fee, since the poet Virgil didn't shy
(12:05):
away from sending terrible stuff. Enius's way. To quote my
own high school translation of Virgil, Aeneas was much buffeted
by the winds of fate. I mean, the dude lost
his wife and his homeland, He was trapped in numerous
deadly squalls at sea. He even had to face a
rabid cyclops mob. But what I was most impressed by
is the fact that Eneas didn't shy away from all
(12:26):
the bad stuff or try to suppress what he went through. No,
he kind of relished focusing on it. Take for example,
what happened soon after Eneas and his men crash onto
the coast of Carthage after enduring a terrible storm. They've
been shipwrecked, They've found themselves on the shores of this
strange land. Eneas and his men were soon welcomed by
(12:47):
this strange land's residence as well as their queen, Dido.
Dido wanted to be hospitable, so she invited the Trojans
to a big feast, the first great meal Aeneas's men
had had in months. That's the first time that they
have found a place where they feel like maybe they
can be a little safe for a moment and reflect.
(13:08):
At the celebration, the queen asks Nias to tell the
story of how he and his men wound up shipwrecked
on the beach outside their city. And at this point
Eneas could have tried to do the polite thing, you know,
share a few vague particulars about what happened, but not
get into too many of the unpleasant details, as that
probably would have ruined the celebratory mood. But that's not
(13:31):
what Eneas did. Too deep for words, Oh Queen, is
the grief you bid me renew? How the Greeks overthrew
Troy's wealth and woe for relm the sights most piteous
that I saw myself, and wherein I played no small role.
Annias really went there. He spent an entire chapter of
(13:52):
the poem walking through the terrible, sordid, gory details of
literally every single bad thing he and his men went through,
and he has recalls the moments when he's leaving Troy,
with the city burning around him, he puts his father
on his back to carry him out of the city.
He grabs his son's hand and has him follow it
(14:14):
along at his side. Enias describes turning back and sort
of seeing his wife has gone missing. He's lost her
in the melee, and he goes to the ships and
tries to sort of rally some of his men together
and flee on the water. Such words he spoke while
sick with deep distress. He feigns hope on his face
(14:39):
and deep in his heart stifles his anguish. Enias didn't
downplay any of the trauma he experienced. He described it
in as much detail and with as much candor as
he could, which didn't make for a very pleasant dinner
party conversation. Many of us would choose not to be
as open as a Enias was in discussing the negative
experience as we've endured, we'd probably assume that none of
(15:02):
our friends wanted to hear about all our drama. We
might figure that talking about our tragedies would likely make
us feel worse. But the science shows that this is
a spot where our minds are lying to us, because
tons of evidence suggests that disclosing our personal tragedies openly
might be an important first step towards actually healing them.
Years ago, I came across an interesting finding that people
(15:25):
who had had a major traumatic experience when they were
young were much more likely to have long term health problems.
This is Jamie Pennybaker, a professor of psychology at UT Austin.
Jamie has been a guest on the Happiness Lab before
to share his work on the importance of talking candidly
about our bad times. I later discovered it was because
people kept it secret. That they still were thinking about it,
(15:47):
but they were keeping it secret because it was humiliating
to acknowledge it. And we found that when people were
asked to write about a deeply troubling traumatic experience or
upsetting experience that they hadn't talked to other people about,
that it was associated with better physical health. That people
went to the doctor last, their immune system got better.
So that was how I've become so intrigued with this
(16:10):
notion that if you have something that's bad and you
don't want to talk about it, you probably should think
about talking about it, or at least writing about it.
He's spoken to Holocaust survivors about sharing their harrowing life stories,
and he's also had college students write down their upsetting memories.
His research shows that talking in detail with someone you
trust about unpleasant events, or even just jotting them down
(16:33):
on paper, can have a surprisingly positive impact. There are
easily one or two thousand studies that have been done
since then. Across these studies, it's been associated with reductions
and symptoms of depression and post traumatic stress disorder. It's
been associated with people performing better on creative tasks, doing
better on standardized tests like SATs or MCATs people they
(16:55):
report being happier, they're mentally healthier, and the biological markers
have been quite impressive in terms of changes in terms
of improvements and symptoms of arthritis and immune disorders and
cardiovascular changes and so forth. There's a decent chance it'll
be associated with your sleeping better, that you'll be able
to get along with other people better. You're able to
(17:16):
get through upsetting experiences the way that we often don't
if we are sitting quietly and mulling over these issues
in our minds. Jamie has found that trying to suppress
our bad memories puts a huge cognitive strain on our brains.
Our minds simply don't react well when we tell them, hey,
this thought is kind of sad. Well, let's not think
about it anymore. And that means that opening up about
(17:38):
our trauma, whether to a caring friend or just in
a private journal, can be a huge psychological relief, one
that comes with all the health and happiness benefits that
Jamie just mentioned. But Jamie has found that there's also
a second reason that openly sharing upsetting stories is beneficial
for us. By putting an upsetting experience into words, It
forces structure, it forces an organization. There's a beginning, middle,
(18:03):
and end. It's not blowing off steam. It's not some
kind of venting or catharsis. Instead, you are coming to
understand the event and also yourself better. When Aeneas flooded
his fellow dinner guests with the sad details about losing
his beloved city and fleeing from a horde of hungry cyclopses,
he wasn't just complaining. He was giving his mind an
(18:24):
effective way to make sense of the dangers his men faced.
Talking about those tragic events allowed Eneas to more carefully
examined the bravery and skill that he and his men
showed during those tough times. It gave him a chance
to reflect on what he learned from all that adversity.
And this is something that I find interesting about adversity.
Having the thing that's negative certainly sucks, but by the
(18:46):
same token, it has the potential to be healing in
to make us rethink ourselves and rethink our lives. Classic
scholar Stephanie Frampton thinks that this is an insight that
Virgil nicely put into effect in one of my favorite
passages of the Indian the spot where Aeneas speaks to
his men directly about what overcoming so much adversity can
mean for their success in the future. Oh, comrades, for this,
(19:11):
we have not been ignorant of misfortune. You who have
suffered worse. This also, God will end. You drew near
to Skyla's fury and her deep echoing crags. You have
known too the rocks of the cyclops. Recall your courage
(19:34):
and banish sad fear. Perhaps even this distress it will
someday be a joy to recall, he says, Recall your
courage and banish fear. That expression, recall your courage, I
think in this context is really interesting. The words in
Latin are ray wocte animos, so call back literally call
(20:00):
it again to yourself, your animos, your spirit. It means
both recall as in call it back to mind, but
it means also have that spirit again, like use it again.
So it points in both directions. Right, it's memory that's
working to contextualize their present situation. It's memory that's working
(20:22):
to give them courage now, and it's courage now that
will give them strength for the future. It's like you're
using the past in a particular story about the past
to remind yourself, Hey, I got through this before, I
was resilient before, I can do it again. So you're
like literally using stories about the past to recall something
really important that you need right now or in the future.
(20:43):
And we can also think that Virgil is doing this
too for himself. Right He's saying, Romans, remember what you've
been through. It is the strength that you need now
to go forward. It's part of why the book was
so embraced when it originally appeared. It had this ripple
effect of saying, if a Eneas's sacrifices were worth it
(21:07):
for him to get here for us, than our sacrifices
are also may be worth it for us to get
to a better place. But Aeneas didn't just tell his
comrades to recall their courage in that famous passage. He
also gave them an optimistic framework for how to think
about and reflect on those sad times in the future.
He says, perhaps it will someday even be a pleasure
(21:28):
to remember these things when we get back from the break.
We'll look at this aspect of virgil psychological insight that
with an optimistic perspective, we can begin to see our
past sorrows not as tragedies but as blessings, ones that
allow us to grow as people. We'll see that Eneas
is an ancient example of what modern psychologists refer to
(21:48):
as post traumatic growth. We'll learn what post traumatic growth
is and why this concept can be so essential for
feeling resilient during bad times. The Happiness Lab will be
right back. Through varied fortunes, through countless meds, we journey
(22:11):
towards Ladium, where Fate promises a home of peace. As
Aeneas helps his men process they're still fresh memories of
the sacking of Troy and their horrific escape across the sea,
he stays focused not just on all the trauma they endured,
but also on their brighter, better future. Aeneas reminds his
(22:31):
men that in spite of all they've been through, they're
still headed for Latium, where Rome stands today, in the
hopes of fulfilling their destiny of founding a great new city.
In this way, Eneas focuses not just on the past, which,
as we learned before, can help him process the grief
he's been through, but also on the future and all
the prosperity it might bring. Aeneas's tendency to keep an
(22:53):
optimistic eye on what's to come was best illustrated in
a pivotal passage in the Inid in which he takes
a journey to the land of the Dead and gets
to see visions of just how amazing the empire he's
about to found will turn out. For this, the kind
of foundational moment is in book six, when he goes
and visits the underworld, and not only does he see
(23:14):
his father, who's died at that point, but he also
sees all of Romans to come, including Augustus and his family.
Turn hither, now, your two eyed gaze, and behold this nation,
(23:35):
the Romans that are yours. Here is Caesar, and all
the seed of Lullus, destined to pass under Heaven's spacious sphere.
And this, in truth is he whom you so often
here promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a God, who
(23:56):
will again establish a golden age in Ladium amid fields.
Once ruled by Saturn. He will advance his empire beyond
the Garriments and India to a land which lies beyond
our stars. If he kind of gets this preview of
like all the awesome stuff to come exactly. And it's like,
(24:18):
because of this, because of what you're going through, we
get to have the realm of today. So the Aeniad
is kind of this incredible story, right. It's aneas this
dude who's like fleeing from his homeland with his old
dad on his back and like trying to grab his
kid before everything burns to rubble. But ultimately it's the
story of the founding of the most important empire ever.
(24:42):
And so it's kind of this like trauma turn to
growth sort of story. And I think that's one of
the reasons I really enjoy it still to this day
is it's kind of like the Roman poetry version of
what psychologists talk about when they talk about post traumatic growth.
Post Traumatic growth is a phenomenon that psychologists have become
more and more interested in. Now you've probably already heard
(25:03):
about a related concept, what's known as post traumatic stress
or PTSD. PTSD is a mental disorder that arises after
people have gone through trauma or other terrible life events.
But scientists have begun to realize that trauma doesn't always
only result in long term emotional distress. Survivors sometimes show
the opposite pattern. After growing through painful life events, people
(25:25):
wind up experiencing a host of positive psychological changes. We
know that trauma can lead to long term stress and
negative symptoms, but there's also evidence that it can be
a fertile ground for discovering new relationships, for harness and courage,
and for finding a sense of meaning. This sweet of
positive outcomes after trauma is what researchers have begun calling
post traumatic growth. The academic concept of post traumatic growth
(25:49):
is relatively new, but it's pretty clear that ancient poets
like Virgil understood it. You find more resilience, you find
a bigger sense of meaning. You think that because you've
made it through this trauma of the world has something
important for you to do. I mean, is that kind
of the way the poem was thought about back in
the day. Absolutely, And it's really as to the trauma
(26:10):
that Rome has gone through for the last hundred years
in their civil wars. It's an idea that if Eneas
can get through this, that we all can get through
this together. We usually assume that upsetting life events have
to take a real toll on us, that traumatic circumstances
inevitably lead to negative effects that can last a lifetime.
(26:31):
But research has shown that there are ways of processing
our bad life events that at least over time, can
help us move towards a sense of growth instead. But
what are some of these more effective ways of dealing
with bad life events. I can tell you right now
that what happened to me is a blessing. This is JR. Martinez.
But it took a lot of work for me to
(26:52):
get to this point, almost sixteen years later, for me
to say this to you. Like the ancient fictional hero Eneas, Jr.
Was no stranger to the horrors of warfare and violence.
He served as a soldier in Iraq, and his life
changed in an instant when the vehicle he was driving
exploded when it was struck by roadside bomb. Jr. Was
eventually rescued, but he suffered horrific burns. These painful injuries
(27:16):
ended the then nineteen year old's military career and left
him scarred and disfigured for life. The identity that I
had known for nineteen years of my life, my physical appearance,
what I recognize for nineteen years of my life, every morning,
every evening, every day in between, when I looked in
the mirror, that identity is taken away from me, and
now I'm looking in the mirror and that person that
I see I do not recognize. I have no relationship
(27:37):
with that individual, and having to come to terms with
accepting the fact that the person that I used to
be has died. That person's gone will never come back. Jr.
Suffered terribly after his accident and initially showed many of
the negative effects that come after experiencing trauma. I was drinking,
I was angry, I was reckless. I mean, I was
(27:57):
not pleasant to be around. I really wasn't. But the
tragedy of that bomb blast was also a pivotal moment
of change in Jr's life. It caused him to realize
that life was short and that he needed to prioritize
making the most of it. So, in spite of his scars,
he decided to follow his dream of becoming an actor.
He auditioned for a part in a soap opera and
got it. He eventually became a TV celebrity, a magazine
(28:21):
cover star, a motivational speaker, and an advocate for disabled veterans.
That's why he now describes getting blown up in Iraq
at nineteen years old as a blessing. I'm blessed to
have a second chance at life. I'm so passionate and
I have so much passion inside of me because I
don't want to take this second chance for granted. I
am trying to live at one hundred percent every single day.
(28:44):
You can hear more of JR. Story in a previous
episode of The Happiness Lab called The Unhappy Millionaire. But
I've included JR. Again in this episode because both he
and our ancient hero Aeneas are great examples of strategies
you can use to move towards post traumatic growth, and
one of those strategies involves trying to manage your emotional
distress as best you can. This was something that Anneus
(29:05):
did well, explicitly telling his men to make sure they
were regulating theirs. Oh comrades, for this, we have not
been ignorant of misfortune. You who have suffered worse, Recall
your courage and banish sad fear. Banish your fear, and
(29:26):
call back those good emotions, says in Us. But former
soldier JR. Martinez gives us a great method to do
just that. He found ways to experience gratitude for his
terrible ordeal. He spent his time intentionally noticing that things
could have been worse, considering the fact that I was
trapped inside of a burning truck for five minutes. I'm
fortunate to only have what I have. I have a
(29:46):
lot of friends, and I know a lot of people
that unfortunately have missing limbs, are more scarred, you know,
or disfigured. You know, you know, I to some degree,
I'm very lucky that my skin graphs and the burns
kind of blend in with my skin tone, so you know,
it's just in some ways it's not has noticeable oddly enough,
right like you know, so in that sense, incredibly fortunate.
(30:09):
But another psychologically effective strategy for getting through tough times
is finding ways to use your adversity to give back
by becoming more other oriented in the face of tragedy.
Annias did this by focusing on taking care of his
men and making sure they made good on the legacy
of their fallen Trojans and Jr. Did something similar. He
(30:29):
realized that he might be able to use his story
to help others, and I started to kind of piece
all this together and realize, wait a minute, there's all
of these lessons and things that I've dealt with that
everybody else is dealing with, So why maybe I can
do something with this? So JR. Became a motivational speaker,
sharing his painful story and the lessons he learned with
military veterans all over the world. He couldn't serve as
(30:51):
a soldier any longer, but he could still contribute something
meaningful to those around him. I can go out there
and serve in a different capacity because the new uniform
that I wear are the scars of my body, and
the new weapon that I have are the words that
come out of my mouth. And Gr's experience shows a
common benefit of post traumatic growth connect with others. After
initially feeling lonely and isolated following his burnt injuries, Jr.
(31:15):
Soon found that his ordeal increased his empathy for other people.
He also saw how much of a happiness boost he
could get from giving back to the people around him
and by sharing his story. JR. Used a final strategy
that can help us grow from suffering. He was able
to find meaning in what he went through. If you've
been through a tough hardship, you can ask yourself what
you learn and what new meeting those events have brought
(31:37):
to your life. It took JR. A while to do this,
but he eventually saw that his brush with death was
a way to achieve a fuller life that he couldn't
have ever imagined before he was burned. Over the course
of my life, there have been a lot of things
that I've experienced that didn't make sense in the moment.
But if you stick with it, if you're patient enough
over the course of time, the answer then presents itself
(31:59):
everything I thought I wanted in life. You know, I
wanted to be a fresh professional football player and have
fame and have all this money and be able to
do all these things. Like if I would have accomplish
those things, would I be as happy as I am now?
I've helped a lot of people, at least I believe
I would be able to make a difference, And I
think that to me is more important than anything else.
(32:21):
And this brings us back to Virgil's hero Eneus, who
spoiler alert, faces even more challenges and bereavements as he
continues his quest to found Rome, but he does so
with the knowledge that he's fulfilling a meaningful mission that
glorious Rome extend her empire to Earth's ends her ambitions
(32:42):
to the skies. What's more meaningful than, you know, picking
up your fallen empire to create this new world, to
create a new home for yourself and the people you
care about. Yeah, and what Virgil is trying to do
with the poem. Virgil gives us a hero that has
been through a lot of sadness but is endeavoring to
(33:04):
kind of move forward. It's certainly a story that I
think resonates with readers today. It certainly resonates with my students,
the sense that they have a goal that they're trying
to get to. Eneas is trying to get to Rome.
My students are trying to graduate from MiG Neither of
(33:25):
these things is easy, and they have to make sacrifices
along the way and make choices that sometimes looking back on,
you know they have that sort of reflective self. There
are maybe which things have gone differently, But the sense
of kind of moving forward and having a backward glance
(33:47):
as part of that is I think really important to
the way that Eneas, the Romans, we all can create meaning.
Returning to the story of Enius always reminds me that
even after experiencing the worst of times, there are strategies
we can use to control our situation. We can call
back our courage and use strategies to regulate the painful
(34:09):
emotions that come with negative events. We can find ways
to use what we've been through to help other people.
And we can harness the power of sharing stories and
disclosing our bad memories to process and learn from what
we've gone through. And remember, telling your story doesn't mean
you have to share your woes with some unsuspecting dinner
party like Eneas did. You can follow the lead of
(34:30):
psychologists Jamie Penny Baker's college students and get all the
benefits that come from journaling about your tough times privately.
But the key is that you use that process to
identify what Eneas and JR. Martinez both found after their
awful ordeals, that if you look carefully, you can find
meaning in your painful stories, and that sense of purpose
can lead to growth and making good on This idea
(34:53):
of meaning making is how I wanted to end this
episode today, because chatting with Stephanie about Virgil did take
me back to our awkward first meeting when I somewhat
aggressively quizzed her about her Enia translation that obviously wasn't
a hugely traumatic event, no cyclops mobbing as it were,
but it still presents the opportunity to use the power
of stories and meaning making to put things right. So
(35:16):
just realizing the power of going back to stories that
at the time were a little bit painful. You know
where I'm going with this. I'm sorry I was so
mean about you. Weren't I was a little bit mean,
But it can be a sort of redemptive story that
even though absolutely it's drawn us together all of these years.
(35:37):
It's something we've talked about and laughed about many, many times.
And I wish I could go back to fifteen years
ago Laurie and Stephanie and tell her, you guys are
fighting about the beginning of the INDID. It's a silly
dinner party. But fifteen years later, you're going to be
on a podcast. I would have to explained what a
podcast is at that point. But you're gonna be on
a podcast, and you're gonna be able to share the
(35:57):
INDID with the whole world. It's amazing. Huge thanks to
my friend Stephanie Frampton for sharing all her wisdom about
some of my favorite ancient mythological heroes. It's now a
time for the season of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients
to leave the shores of Greece and Rome and to
head east to South Asia, where we'll be examining the
(36:18):
happiness insights we can find in the yoga sutras. The
sutras are just the truth, so they're the truth of
the human experience and they can be applied in different
ways depending on what's going on in your life, and
the only things that will resonate from the sutras are
the things that you already know to be true with
(36:39):
it yourself. I hope to see you next week for
the latest edition of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients on
the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness
Lab is co written by Ryan Dilley and is produced
by Ryan Dilley, Courtney Guerino and Britney Brown. The show
(37:01):
was mastered by Evan Viola and our original music was
composed by Zachary Silver. You also heard the voice talents
of David Glover special thanks to Greta Kone, Eric Sandler,
Carly mcgliori, Nicole Morano, Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, My agent
Ben Davis, and the rest of the Pushkin team. The
Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
by me, doctor Laurie Santos.
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