Aristotle, Buddha, Success

Confession: I saw “Hamilton” after Thanksgiving. Like everyone else, I was blown away by it. Of course, I’ve been steeped in the soundtrack for a year, thanks to my kids, so I was able to follow the lyrics  - and they are terrific lyrics. Ahead of time, I was worried that the show might be an anticlimax, but I have to say, it was better than expected. It was great. But I’m not here to add yet another rave review to the pile. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius, no doubt - and like the most successful geniuses, he has a team of like-minded others, also known as collaborators, to work with and to egg him on to success. But I don’t really want to talk about that right now, either. 

Here’s the thing I want to say. Before I saw“Hamilton,” just the soundtrack made me cry a little - his life cut short by that duel with Aaron Burr, his potential wasted - but watching it in our current political climate, I cried a lot. Of course a show about the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution and ideals and sacrifice is bound to stir up patriotism. Well, mine was stirred. It may have fallen out of fashion, patriotism, but I have a deep well of it. So comparing the heroism and bravado of what went into founding a country with the country we have today led me to some sorry, sad tears. What we have now, Trump and his merry band of bankrupters, is an embarrassment. I’m pretty sure the country will survive; but it will take a lot of time and collective recalibrating of ideals to make it flourish. 

Speaking of ideals brings me to the magazine I bought recently, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. I bought it because I was waiting in line at the Honest Weight Food Coop and it was that or a homeopathic tablet for relieving anxiety. Anxiety? Who’s feeling anxious? 

Anyway, the cover article was about living an authentic life, which reminds me of another plank in my scaffolding of success: live according to what you value. But the article that most interested me was about the intermingling of Buddhist and Western ethics in our culture. Ethics, if I recall correctly, being a code of behavior. "Principles of right conduct," says my American Heritage Dictionary. Heady stuff, I know, but bear with me. Western ethics equals Aristotelian, according to the author of this article. Let’s not debate the guy (and yes, the author is a guy, bien sur, c’mom, womens, let’s get heard more MORE more. But I digress) let’s grant him that, even if it's reductionist. He’s talking about Aristotle’s eudaimonia, or human flourishing, the principle of living so that one expresses and develops oneself to the fullest potential. This is apparently Aristotle’s Good. Kind of like a Martha Stewart Good Thing, in the ethical realm as opposed to in the household management realm. I’m up for it. Or down for it. Yes, more down. I’ve been feeling kind of down. Which is repetitive, but it does tie into my theme.

As I was saying, the article says “the general Aristotelian notion that a life dedicated to the cultivation of virtue and the contemplation of wisdom is the best and happiest kind of human life is one that has been readily transplanted into Buddhism.” Western ethics have infused into Buddhist ethics so that we have replaced the ideal of living in a manner that will lead to “surcease” of suffering and the end of reincarnation with the ideal of eudaimonia, or human flourishing. In other words, the Aristotelian idea of human flourishing is an idea “so pervasive in Western culture that Westerners are often unaware of its source.” 

Indeed. I thought it was Buddhist. But it was Aristotle, brought to me by a bunch of Jewish seekers who went to India in the late 1960s to study Buddhism and returned to awaken the masses in America. Everything old is new again and old again and circuitous again. But never mind. One thing I definitely value is eudaimonia. 

Another point of the article is that for Westerners - and for many, if not most, Easterners - the Buddhist ideal of attaining nirvana and ending the cycle of rebirth and suffering doesn’t stand up to modern science and other influences. This essential of the Eastern strand of Buddhism just doesn’t work for we cynics. We are not used to living in a caste society where our roles are defined for life. We are not accustomed to resignation about this life and to therefore work on our selves to prepare to come back in the next life as something a little more evolved on the spectrum of life. We are not into delayed gratification if the delay is of multiple lifetimes. Nope, that is definitely not Western. We are focused on this life. And many of us, whether we practice Buddhism or another kind of self-improvement, hope to achieve a quintessential Western ideal. Human flourishing. And we all assume that we all agree that the flourishing of all humans is the goal. 

Or at least we did, until we realized the Conservative movement has steadily, over the last thirty years, while we were improving ourselves, swept us all up into a giant burlap bag, and with this election, pulled tight and knotted the drawstring over our heads. We are now like a bunch of kittens stuck in a sack about to be heaved over the railing and drowned in the river of life by a bunch of white dudes who have apparently didn't agree with us that human flourishing is the greatest good. 

So maybe we need  to start believing in rebirth and so on. Because maybe there’s not much we can fix about this life. 

Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Did that last paragraph skew too bleak? I’m trying to move away from politics. Politics, after all, is the rearranging of the deck chairs on the ship of state. It’s the trajectory of the ship we need to think about most. 

So what constitutes human flourishing? This is the big question. We keep thinking flourishing depends on ever-increasing piles of money. Yet we are proved wrong about that again and again. We do need enough money to feel like we’re flourishing, but it’s not as much as we think, and there are other things we need to flourish. We need to feel like we are helping others. We need to feel part of a community. We need to have ways to center ourselves. We need to have purpose. We need external supports, which is where government and community come in handy. We also, as a psychologist I recently spoke to said, need to do the inner work to improve our lives. 

And also, we need to call our elected representatives and let them know what we think about those deck chairs, and we need to try to arrange them so that everyone can have a good seat. 

I Regret Nothing - With Name-Dropping

Product of Good Parenting

I recently passed a diverting lunchtime with a writer friend revisiting some of the opportunities we failed to grab, back in our twenties. Turns out we have a couple of doozies. For example, I offer my tour of the The New Yorker, about 20 years ago. Through a connection I can no longer recall - something to do with his mother - Louis Menand gave me a tour of The New Yorker. Yes, that Louis Menand, who writes regularly for the magazine. He gave me a tour. Through the offices. Of The New Yorker. 

What was it like, The New Yorker? What was Louis Menand like? I hardly know. I doubt I had a better notion then. It’s as if I were led, blindfolded, on that tour. I have one memory, a glimpse into a small office space. It was empty, but showed signs of occupancy. Which famous writer worker there? I don’t have the faintest idea. Maybe it was a plebe’s office. Who the heck knows? As for Louis Menand – I have only the recollection of the sensation of being with a person. I wouldn’t recognize him now, and frankly, I wouldn’t have recognized him a week after that tour. I don’t know that I ever looked him in the face. He was with me – beside, ahead, behind? – the way any authority figure was throughout my childhood, a shape or a bulk of anonymous but indisputable existence with which I could expect no real interaction. Like a coat rack draped in an overcoat. Certainly not like person with whom I could (ought to) communicate as an equal.

Looking back, I see the whole thing as a failure of imagination, not of courage. I wasn’t nervous. I was simply unable to consider my proximity to Louis Menand and that tour as opportunities for career advancement.  It’s possible I stood on a point of honor: I didn’t want to be like everyone else he toured around The New Yorker on his mother’s request and then ASK something of him, career-related. It’s possible. And stupid. More likely, though, my muteness sprang from seeing him as an authority figure, and seeing myself – or not seeing myself at all.

So why was he an authority figure? And why was I – a child?

This where I indulge in a little parent bashing. I don’t really like to do it, because, now that I am one, I understand that parents are mere humans, full of insecurities and fatal flaws that can obscure our good intentions. Nevertheless, I have to say that some responsibility for the stupid lack of imagination I showed then lay with my parents. For who else but they were supposed to teach me how to see my possibilities? I came across this bit by none other than Martha Stewart, in which she says the best thing anyone ever taught her was that she could do anything she put her mind to – and the person who taught her that? Her dad. She says, “I think it really often is up to the parents to help build confidence in their children. It is a very necessary part of growing up.”* (Then she applies another layer of decoupage to the birdcage she's making out of strips of six thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets for her gazebo.)  

Now, Martha's run the gamut from model to mogul to jailbird and back. Whatever you may fault her for, you can't fault her for lack of imagination for where she could be and what she could do.

It never even occurred to me that my tour with Louis Menand could be anything other than that, a tour. I never for an instant considered myself equal to anyone working there. Even though there were people my age, people from my high school class, working there around that time, I just felt different from Those People. They were on some other existential plane. So that’s the bottom line.

I left Louis Menand and The New Yorker, and I returned to my stultifying data entry job and my novel in progress, and never followed up. If Louis Menand noticed I didn’t write him a thank-you note, I hope he didn’t tell his mother. It never occurred to me, not because I was rude. I wasn’t. I was raised to write thank-yous. I had a supply of cards with my name printed on them for this purpose. No, I didn’t think of writing him because I didn’t imagine I had registered on his brain. He was one of Those People. 

So, my point, Readers, is that it’s necessary to imagine yourself using your talents and skills for work you want to do, and it’s important to help others imagine these things for themselves. Not unrealistic things. Realistic things. Who’s to say what’s unrealistic? That’s where imagination kicks in – imagining seemingly out-of-reach places reachable. Like taking advantage of an in at The New Yorker to explore how you might fit there. If it’s too late for you, then do it for your kids, or for your niece. Do it for your mentees. You might help shape the next Martha Stewart – or, if that gives you the heebie-jeebies, the next Louis Menand. You want people to believe you could be a contendah, and you gotta do that for them, too.

My friend has a doozie of a regret story. It also involves The New Yorker. I won’t tell it here, because it’s her doozie. I’ll just say it might beat mine.

*Martha on the best advice she ever received (in LinkedIn)