Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life

Author:Michael Dirda [Dirda, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429900287
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Published: 2007-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

SIX

LIVING IN THE WORLD

I assure you, doctor, it is a relatively simple matter for a weathered charlatan like myself to keep up interest in so small a carnival as this. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

TAKING THINGS LIGHTLY

According to the seventeenth-century divine Thomas Fuller, “We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.” [n other words, life is real! life is earnest! Philosophers and moral essayists, tragic dramatists and unhappy poets all agree about this. As a consequence, the tone of most reflections on this world tends toward the meditative, melancholy, and disenchanted. Woe, woe, and more woe— it’s downhill all the way, the paths of glory lead but to the grave, and stoic endurance would seem the best we can aim for. “If a man has learnt to think,” says Tolstoy, “no matter what he may think about, he is always thinking of his own death.”

And yet. “Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs,” counsels the philosopher George Santayana, adding, “Let not the unwary reader think me flippant for saying so; it was Plato, in his solemn old age, who said it.” Certainly if there is any worldly talent worth cultivating, it’s a sense of humor* To possess a cheerful outlook may be the greatest gift of the gods, the distant second best being a taste for irony. Such temperaments allow one to step back from painful situations and view them with a little detachment. Why else do we live, concluded Jane Austen, but “to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in return”? To the genial-spirited anything that happens can be shrugged off as yet another part of “life’s rich pageant.”

But how can one acquire such an upbeat attitude? In the same way we acquire all our habits—through practice. Psychologist William James discovered that if one pretended to be happy, this “going through the motions” would by itself lead to an improved mood. In other words: Act as you would like to be. It pays to picture the sort of character you present to the world. Do you want to be regarded as a whiner, a self-pitying hypochondriac, a man without backbone, a woman without pride? We all admire those who can control themselves, who—to use cliches—look on the bright side or possess a sunny disposition. The world, it’s said, may be a tragedy for those who feel, but it can be a comedy, or at least a comedy of errors, for those who think.

“The most effective weapon of any man is to have reduced his share of histrionics to a minimum.” This was the watchword of Andre Malraux, the French novelist, adventurer, art historian, politician. Malraux believed in maturity, in being a grown-up. While our natural tendency may be to exaggerate our sorrows and fears, things often don’t turn out as badly as expected. Nevertheless, we all tend to get caught up in emotional situations, carried away by our own sense of personal melodrama. In short, we overreact, indeed overact, performing for an audience, whether real or imagined.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.