3.2 Stendhal Syndrome

Stendhal Syndrome

Stendhal was a French author in the nineteenth century. He wrote a novel called, in English, The Red and the Black, which I have read and can recommend if you like stories about boys turning into men and wandering about the countryside. Anyway, this isn’t about him. This is about the phenomenon he described in another book, about finally arriving in Florence to see Michelangelo’s Statue of David, and other famous art-pieces, after years of having heard about their sublimity, and desiring to travel there to see them for himself. 
 
 He writes that he found himself in a kind of spiritual ecstasy. He could barely stand he was so overcome with emotion, an affect which he attributed to the extreme beauty of the work, and just the general ambience of the place. No doubt before him, but certainly ever since, the hospital at Florence has seen tourist after tourist admitted with similar symptoms: dizziness, shortness of breath, disorientation. A psychosomatic condition, of course. A good one? I reckon. 
 
 This is relevant to me because I want to imagine thinking about the idea of achievement in terms of what came to be called, much later, Stendhal Syndrome, or Florence Syndrome. If achievement, put simply, is the gaining of something we set out to gain, or the completion of something we set out to complete; the arrival of a thing, moment, deal, prize, acknowledgement, or goal that we did not have in the past but hoped we might attain in the future, then achievement really is built on planning, anticipation, process, and realization. And it could really apply to anything. 
 
 What if we defined achievement as the feelings we associate with Stendhal Syndrome? Imagine the last time you set out to climb a hill (assuming you’ve set out to climb a hill before). Do you remember the feeling that came over you upon reaching the top and looking out at the view? What about that feeling of savasana at the end of a yoga class? Or the feeling you get, which I experienced last night, at the end of a great Game of Thrones episode; or at the end of a novel. This is the feeling of achievement, and it signals the realization of an entire experience. All the bits and pieces of lead-up are finally here, fully formed.

What if we acknowledged those feelings — of realization, arrival, and wholeness — as achievement every time we felt them. I think that we would find that we are achieving far more often than we give our selves credit for, and I don’t think that we would be so over-awed by them if we make that acknowledgement. On the other side of the coin, I think we would also find out how many things we’re achieving that are not in our interests; things that don’t serve us, or that we use for self-sabotage.

At the crux of it, the feeling of achievement is the feeling of being fully formed. It’s the feeling that we get when we finally buy that car we’ve desired, or finish the article we’ve been working on. It’s a powerful psychological tool. We can motivate ourselves to do things by imagining that we are not whole, and creating for ourselves a quest to become whole.

But why not bring that feeling of wholeness closer and operate from there?

This is essentially tantric: a realization that we have the things we desire already; that our appreciation of art’s beauty is largely derived from our being primed to receive the art piece. And we do that priming ourselves. It’s not inherent to the work. I suppose that a great reason to remember that we are already fully formed — that we are already achieving — is that when we think we’re not fully formed, and then we finally get the thing we think will make us whole, we often totally skitz out. Whether it’s fainting in front of the Statue of David, ejaculating too early, or not tuning in with our lover, weird things happen when we postpone that feeling of achievement and attach it to a very specific set of circumstances. 
 
 Is this clear? I’m not sure. But I really feel it’s true. Imagine if you felt just as blissed out by looking into your lover’s eyes as you did when you reached peak orgasm together. It’d be a beautiful and empowering thing.

Love,

Simon.

TL;DR You’re invited to bring a sense of bliss to everything you do, right now. You have already achieved the wholeness that requires. 
 
 Practice 2: Pick something that occurs in your daily life that you don’t think you really appreciate as much as you could. Let’s say your morning cup of tea. For a few days in a row, when you’re drinking your cup of tea, squeeze your PC muscle and breathe deeply. Feel the pleasure in your body.