By Stuart James Whitley |
Bio
Always a fan of pith & substance, when I wrote out the three rules for a good living in my last post (Wolf’s Theorem),
it occurred to me that the same formula might apply to the development
of good temperament. In common parlance, ‘temperament’ is the kind of
person we are. One supposes it’s what Shakespeare had in mind when he
bid Hamlet say: “Come, give us a taste of your quality.” (Act II, Scene
ii)
Temperament is more formally defined in the Oxford Concise
dictionary as the individual character of one’s constitution that
permanently affects the manner of acting, feeling and thinking. Matters
it seems to me entirely within our control, though occasionally there
are examples to the contrary: “He’s hot-headed”, “She’s selfish”, “He’s
impulsive”, and so on. And it is true that we seem to have
characteristics that in some measure define us: we are sometimes graced
with artistic talent, physical presence or an ability to think clearly
under certain conditions. The options are infinite. Regardless, we hold
the reins to the outer expression of those qualities—or
frailties—entirely within our grip, barring mental disorder or lesion
in the cerebral cortex.
In Yiddish (as in many languages and
cultures), there are many words to describe someone of even
temperament—but the Jews nail it with the exuberant term ‘mensch’. A
‘mensch’ is someone with an admirable character, observable rectitude,
dignity, possessing a sense of what is right, responsible, calm and
decorous. I contend there are three simple rules to qualify—valid in
any culture:
1. Know yourself.
The first of these
three dicta is probably the most important, and was an old charge when
Aristotle expressed it in his teachings. The capacity to take a
personal inventory has to be developed through teaching,
self-instruction and introspection. To do it takes a form of wisdom.
Everyone is familiar with Polonius’ instruction to his son Laertes when
he is about to leave home, which reads in part:
This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man,
(Hamlet, Act I: Scene iii)
Now, there’s a trick here: we’re all capable of self-deception.
The Nobel philosopher/physicist Feynman said, “The first principle is
that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to
fool.” Others have riffed off this, contending sensibly that, rather
than trying to attain some verifiable truth (which is not a truth
inside us, but a truth among us), a primary value of modern everyday
life is to not fool ourselves or cheat ourselves into believing
something. Perhaps this is what Anais Nin meant when she said, “We
don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
If one
knows oneself, one knows as a matter of course what we are committed
to. And commitments are the only sure way of bring the future into
being, including the kind of person we want to be.
More tomorrow…
© 2009 Stuart J. Whitley. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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By Stuart J. Whitley |
Bio
I’ve
been writing about the ethic of aging, which is an internal imperative
obligating the transmission of values, ethics and wisdom from one
generation to another. Usually, this is a phenomenon that occurs
unconsciously, in a way nearly invisible against the tapestry of
quotidian life. But now and then, it’s rendered explicit, often in
surprisingly casual ways.
An old friend Wolf and I were in a
hunting camp one brilliant fall day this September, each of us with our
new son-in-law. It was a spot of extraordinary beauty, near the
confluence of the Stewart and Yukon Rivers. It was about as close to
nowhere as one can get without a GPS fix. It had been a glorious full
day, and sitting on the high riverbank at sunset, scotch in hand, it
was hard not to think that when God decided to put His hand to
world-building and started to assemble his elemental building blocks,
the place where he experimented with texture, colour, contrast and
sound was near here.
I can’t recall how the subject arose
among the four of us, but Wolf opined that there were really just 3
simple rules for good living. That spring, as the retired principal for
a school where he’d served for many years, he’d been asked to address
the graduating class. Being a thoughtful man, he’d considered carefully
what pithy advice he could share with young people on the threshold of
their lives, and he came up with an equilateral triangle of accumulated
wisdom. Three short, simple rules.
As the setting sun briefly
set aflame the golden poplars on the other side of the river, then
dimmed, Wolf set out his first rule:
show up. Woody Allen had
it right, he said—80% of success is simply showing up. If you make a
commitment, be there. If you promise something, do it. That’s how we
bring the future into being.
The second rule was:
work hard.
The old chestnut has it right—you get from something what you put into
it. There are no shortcuts, and if you skip the math, the answer will
invariably be wrong. As my father used to say, “Good enough usually
isn’t.”
And the last rule was:
let go. There are so
many hurts and slights and perceived wrongs during the course of a
lifetime that, like barnacles on a ship, they can accumulate to the
point where the vessel is seriously off course. To illustrate, Wolf
referred us to the last scene in
Romeo & Juliet where the
Prince, surveying the carnage caused by warring families who would not
let go of their view of righteousness and abandon their tragic feud,
remarked:
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.
This
Bard-in-the-bush recital illustrated profoundly for us how the
inability to resolve or get beyond past issues leads to unintended
consequences, far worse than anything planned or imagined.
These rules, taken together, will ensure a good life if properly observed.
This
started me thinking. I think there are 3 simple rules for good
thinking, and 3 equally pithy rules for good temperament. More on that
in my next post.
© 2009 Stuart J. Whitley. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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