A Taste of One’s Quality: 3 Rules for Good Temperament (Part 2)

By Stuart James Whitley | Bio

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Continuing on from yesterday's post....

2. Be patient
As the Biblical injunction provides, all things good come to those who wait. This precondition for good temperament has two elements to it: time and wisdom. Part of wisdom is the understanding that active listening is a form of generosity, a key element in a mature temperament. Waiting for the other point of view, the various possible perspectives, or even the depletion of emotion, takes discipline.

Deferring to the other also allows the settlement of what one might call the heart’s intuitions. As Pascal said: “The heart has its reasons that reason does not know.” This is behind the ancient nursery rhyme:

There was an old owl that lived in an oak
The more he heard, the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard
Oh if only more folks were like that wise old bird…

The other aspect of patience has to do with one’s use of time. I remember reading in school that Marcus Aurelius, the brilliant Roman general of the second century, would take along a separate tent, candles and writing materials on his campaigns. Each night, no matter how difficult or bloody the day had been, he would retire to this private place and think, collecting his thoughts and writing them down. Some of his brilliant insights appear in his Meditations. In other words, creating the time and space to think things through is essential to understanding, and bespeaks the necessary patience to acquire it.

3. Be respectful.
The third canon involves taking responsibility, deference, tolerance and good manners. The latter is a visible signal that respect is operating as a channel for all else. There’s a wonderful insight from Shaw in Pygmalion that better expresses the point:

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners
or good manners, but having the same manner
for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were
in heaven, where there are no third-class carriages,
and one soul is as good as another.

There is a difference between deference and servility. There are many instances in which it is both fair and appropriate to defer to the views of another, without the question of who is right being necessarily decided. This routinely occurs in politics, friendships, marriages and other relationships, in which the damage done by intransigence is far worse than that which may occur by deference. Sometimes it is not always enough—or even important—to be right on an issue.

Beware the person with an infantile sense of justice. The maturity to take responsibility for what is essentially a moral duty to defer in some circumstances is, in many respects, the hardest thing for children to learn, as it engages their sense of fairness. Pasternak (To Friends East and West) captures the lesson:

He comes as a guest to the feast of existence,
and knows that what matters is not how much
he inherits, but how he behaves at the feast,
and what people remember and love him for.

In my next post, I’ll formulate three rules for good thinking.

Written by eldering at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: intuition justice listening pascal responsibility time wisdom

Wolf's Theorem: Show Up, Work Hard, Let Go

By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio

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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: aging ethics generation good_living rules success wisdom

Harold's Story - Part 3

By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio

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I read somewhere that good decision-making—indeed, good relations—depends upon a virtuous cycle of respect, trust and candour (which takes some time to establish, but which can easily be interrupted). Attitude, after all, is everything. Perhaps that last statement needs a bit of refinement: the ethical attitude is everything. By that I mean the determination of the answer to the age-old question: who is right? Was Harold right to express his annoyance with conduct he perceived as racist and excessive, in coarse language? Was the police officer right to arrest Harold in his perceived perception that Harold was instigating a threat to the public peace? Was the security guard right to expel the children from his shop and continue to press for their departure from the vicinity? We don’t have enough facts, a lawyer might argue. In a courtroom, various perspectives and motives would be put in play, with neither party being satisfied by the result. Forensic justice cannot answer competing claims for rightness in a manner satisfying for everyone. But here, I stand with Harold.

We react to moral decisions at a deeply emotional level. Goodness makes us glad; we recoil from evil. Very early on, religious teachings identified good and bad as beauty and ugliness, light and darkness. ‘Fairness’ has two meanings, one of which connotes beauty. Fairness as a generalized principle of equity took some time to be formally incorporated into the narrow arteries of justice, and in the minds of many, they are—or should —be the same thing.

What stands in the way of an ethical attitude is the lack of clarity about judgement and the allocation of moral choices, which is to say, what we ought to do in any given situation. Each of us is driven by what we feel  to be right, based on the way in which our life experience has conditioned us to think. (I use the emotive word ‘feel’ here deliberately, for moral choices are a complex of rational and emotional processes of evaluation, with the emotions being dominant—after all, such choices go to the very root of who we are as human personalities.) We are introduced to a moral universe in which certain assumptions are instilled into us before we achieve personhood. Some actions are bad regardless of motivation. If a man abandons his family, it is a bad thing. But a mature mind, a loving state of being, would seek the circumstances: would mental illness in the offender make a difference? Of course. An infantile sense of justice allocates blame in the result, regardless of circumstances. Arrogance has a blinding potency. Unfortunately, this leads in some cases to the lawyer’s ephemeral answer to a request for an opinion: “It depends.” What I am trying to get at here is the need for a discipline of discernment, the refinement of our capacity to see what is essential in any set of circumstances, and from the other’s point of view. Thinking critically is essential to finding the true course. That doesn’t always come with age and experience—but it usually does. Somewhere at the root of our humanity, almost at a cellular level, there is a duty to share that wisdom.

I want to do the right thing
I have always wanted to do the right thing
but absolutes are for children
whose sense of justice is exaggerated
and the world is nicely managed
by simple allocations of good and bad
but the starting point for decisions
and in particular the nettlesome matter
of what to do about mistakes, or
that which readily inspires fear in us,
is not reductio ad simpliciter
but a recognition of a moral stance
—one of empathy—which recognizes that
not everything is always as it seems

everything beyond that, the whole rich palette
of emphases, principles, values and possibilities
that could have been imagined in the love of you,
especially in its spiritual dimension,
can be grasped and explained only
as a consequence of this essential quality

I want to do the right thing. I do.
what that will be, in any given situation,
from now on until the end of days, will
try to comprehend the wonder that is you

© 2009 Stuart J. Whitley. All rights reserved.

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: age candour decision-making ethical_attitude experience judgement justice moral_choice respect trust wisdom

Wisdom

By Stuart Whitley | Bio

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the man with the unpressed suit and upraised arms
speaking in monotone, knows exits and oxygen masks
the woman in the seat beside me moulds latex
into monsters’ heads for movies, and wonders
if she has time for a Harvey’s hamburger, loaded,
before her bags arrive on the carousel
do these people have wisdom?
 
five miles below, a man scratches earth from dinosaur bones
and another scutters down darkened lanes breaking car windows
looking for glitter, running from the alarm’s wail, laughing
is there wisdom in knowing what to look for?
is there the slightest wisdom in getting away with something?
 
when the magi set off to honour the birth of an unknown child
were they wise because they knew what no one else knew?
the natural way is the wisest way, the old cultures have it
but are my instincts wiser than those of the ebola virus?
the lawyer wielding principle like a club seems wise
though reason may be just to the cause, it is cruel to the man
is a judge wise to discern the difference, or wiser to ignore it?
 
every child believes that darkness is scary and the enemy’s evil
that strangers will hurt you but loved ones will not
can the seeds of wisdom possibly lie in what everyone thinks to be so?
are we wise when we’ve learned our lesson, or acknowledged mistakes?
does any part of wisdom lie in relinquishment, regret or longing or pain?
is it only then that the truest value of a thing is taken?
 
do we know wisdom to see it? can we teach or acquire it?
is it the same as feeling or sensing or waiting or wanting?
is it somewhere near the sum of experience?
having it, are we happier, richer, sexier or more clever?
or is it an abstract, like Baffin, familiar but remote?
 
wisdom, I think, is a version of sorrow, a burden
a state of mind edged with sadness, even as it knows joy
more believing than knowing, more patience than insistence
it is seeking to understand, and be understood,
the divinity that is discovered in ourselves, and in others

and finally:
wisdom is a reverence for what is essential in the human condition
which is why this love, this bottomless love of ours, is so wise

Written by eldering at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: poem wisdom

Toward An Ethic of Aging III

By Stuart J Whitley | Bio

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In my last post I wondered about whether or not there was an ethic of aging. Again, by ‘ethics’ I mean simply some general consensus or agreement about what is good about the way we relate to one another. This is a group or communal expression of belief, rather than an individual or moral outlook. The distinction is thus simply drawn between morals and ethics, terms which are often interposed. I should be more explicit and ask whether there is a reasonable consensus around obligations associated with the process of aging. One needs to be clear about such things because there are many ethical issues relating to this subject: the diminishment of worth of old people and their relegation to institutional repositories, the abuse of the elderly, the genetic or pharmaceutical tinkering with the aging process, and so on.

What I’m talking about is whether ethical obligations arise as one draws toward and enters the last quarter of one’s natural life. A duty, perhaps. It is necessary to consider the nature of ‘duty’, to whom it is owed, its relationship with responsibility, and moral decision-making (and the nature of compromise and courage and blame as dimensions of this discussion). The very idea of duty has a quaint ring to it these days; sometimes that is the best that may be said for it. After all, concentration camps abound more than one hundred years after the Boer War (during which they were introduced as a weapon against civilians who might offer succour to the enemy), where internees were encamped in brutal conditions by those who later asserted that they were only doing their duty. The debasement of the term in this way has diminished its currency. The call to one’s countryman to ‘do one’s duty’ can be seen in both positive and derogatory terms. What is one’s ‘duty’? This will almost always be contextual.

The Oxford definition of ‘duty’ is a moral or legal obligation to which one is bound or ought to do. This would be something to which one is committed or obedient to because of the rightness of the thing moving within oneself as a binding force.

In “The Duties of a Citizen (Larchwood, Ontario, 1913)” cited by John Ralston Saul in Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997), the Duties of a Citizen as a lesson for recent immigrants were expressed as follows:

•    Understand our government
•    Take active part in politics
•    Assist all good causes
•    Lessen intemperance
•    Work for others.

Saul describes this as a participatory obligation in a process that is democratic and cooperative. As character is developed by experience, it follows that a richer contribution could be made by someone who has lived long. As the social welfare state has a duty to care for the elderly as they become frail, so one might argue that there is a concomitant obligation on the part of seniors to invest their accumulated wisdom in the transmission of values and knowledge to the subsequent generation.

In the context of Biblical tradition, elders were required to perform several functions as a matter of duty. They resolved disputes, drawing on their acquired knowledge and skills. They attended to the sick. "Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil …” (James 5:14). Elders in the religious community were role models for righteous behaviour: they are to watch out for the church in humility. "I exhort the elders who are among you, I being also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God among you, taking the oversight, not by compulsion, but willingly; nor for base gain, but readily; nor as lording it over those allotted to you by God, but becoming examples to the flock.” (1 Peter 5:1-4). Elders are the designated leaders of the church who act not for pay or reward but because of their perceived duty to serve. Clearly, the role of the aged in leading, as a matter of moral duty, the vertical process of cultural continuity is an ancient one.



There was a contemplative and teaching role, which reflected the accumulation of wisdom borne of an exemplary life. Eldering was a position to be sought but not taken lightly: "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1). The role of elder was one to be taken very seriously, which inherently assumes a moral content, a duty, if not a sacred trust.

Of course, cultures that prized elders and their contributions were aboriginal. The skills and knowledge essential for survival had to be transmitted from one generation to another, and for understanding of the ways of the world—especially the inexplicable events that beset humans—elders had an obligation to explain, lead and inspire. While wisdom is not necessarily the sole purview of the grey beard, nevertheless, with age and experience comes the weight of authenticity. Examples abound: when Ahtahkakoop, notable Chief of the Plains Cree, was asked toward the end of his life about the decisions he had taken during the transition from hunter to farmer under increasingly repressive policies of the Canadian government, he said that decisions must have the long view: “Let us not think of ourselves but of our children’s children. Let us show our wisdom by choosing the right path now, while we yet have a choice.”

The plains Indians had a concept that generally captures the idea of ‘duty’ as a reciprocal obligation: it is the idea of wechewehtowin, which loosely means ‘partnership’ in Cree. There is a distinction between wisdom and knowledge, meaning that everything is one as created by the Great Spirit, and has four aspects: mind, body, emotion, and spirit. Ancient wisdom is learnt from experience and taught by wise old people; it has equity with other knowledge systems. Wisdom lies mainly in the acquiring, sharing and application of knowledge. Through use of the Cree concept of ‘partnership’, it has been argued that both Aboriginal wisdom and western scientific knowledge could be accommodated, and one way to approach it was to view it as a puzzle whereby each knowledge system supplied certain pieces (see WIDENING THE CIRCLE, Newsletter of the Native Mental Health Research Team, Volume 2, Issue 2 Winter1999).

I do think there is at least a vestigial obligation in elders, regardless of culture, to impart wisdom. In a democracy, this may be taken as a given, for a democracy without participation cannot sustain itself, and informed participation makes for a richer discourse.

 

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: aboriginal aging cree duty elder elder_abuse eldering knowledge wisdom

Toward an Ethic of Aging I

   By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio

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About three years ago, I assisted an aboriginal woman elder with a presentation she was doing for the media. She was trying to explain the role of justice as conceived by the first peoples of this continent. Paraphrasing her: first, she said, there is the sky over all of us, then there is the water below. What takes our breath away when we look to the rivers and the forests is the same thing that possesses us when we think about the wonder inside our own bodies. As the moon compels the oceans with forces we can feel (if not fully understand), so is every atom of water linked one to the other in performing the essential tasks that the living earth needs. A rainstorm in the mountains stirs our blood. What we do to the pond in the slough where the horses graze, we do to the world. As goes the fate of the smallest creek, goes the fate of us all. All things are connected.

[Read More]

Written by eldering at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: aboriginal elder ethic justice responsibility wisdom

The Poetic Memory IV

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This post is the fourth in a four-part series.

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It may be that memory is the Well of Wisdom: this idea is central to Celtic mythology. In Celtic lore, the well is situated at the centre of the Otherworld, the spiritual source, the land of the dead. Where it gushes up, pilgrims drink from it using a skull as a vessel, thereby creating a direct link with the dead. At the well of Llandeilo in Dyfed, Wales, this practice continued into the twentieth century. The skull was said to be that of St. Teilo, the ruins of whose church loomed over the well itself.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Learning

Tagged with: intuition memory poetry wisdom