The Day That I Die

I'm a big fan of the Zac Brown Band, and hours of listening has seared the bands' songs into my mind. Along with the catchy melodies, soothing harmonies, and impressive musicianship, I've come to appreciate the philosophy that runs like a thread through their work.  Much like this blog tries to do, many of the band's lyrics reflect a blend of Stoic acceptance of life as it is; an Epicurean appreciation of the pleasures of everyday living; a Christian acknowledgement of God as supreme over all of life; and a growing recognition that time is a precious resource that should not be taken for granted.

Take Day That I Die, from the band's latest album Uncaged, written by Zac Brown, Wyatt Durrette, and Nic Cowan.  After acknowledging the sometimes tough life of a musician on the road, the singer recognizes that the songs come from inside him; he has to sing:


'Cause I believe that I

Was born with a song inside of me.

Never question why, 

I just kept on chasing that melody.

And as time goes by, 

It's funny how time can make you realize, 

We're running out of it.

Anyone in middle age, musician or not, can relate to those last lines:  as time goes by, we begin to realize that time won't last forever.  Once we realize that time has a limit, its value increases.  And as its value increases, we start to think more deliberately about how to spend it.  And there you have the genesis of many a "mid-life crisis."

As the song continues, Zac reminds us that one answer to the realization that time is precious is to make sure we spend it doing something we love.  In his case, playing guitar:

On the day that I die, 

I wanna say that I 

Was a man who really lived and never compromised.

And when I've lived out my days

Until the very end, 

I hope they find me in my home,

A guitar in my hands.

A man who is driven to be a musician by the melodies that seemingly erupt from within him hopes to be playing music to the very end.

Which poses a question:  how do you want to spend the hypothetical day that you die?   When I look around me, it appears that most people want to be found with an iPhone in their hands.  Seriously?  Maybe they are all composing music on GarageBand.......

Time is precious; we don't have an unlimited supply.  Even more daunting, you can't know exactly how much you do have; people like Mike had much less than they expected.   Once you realize that your time has real value, the next step is to be deliberate about how you spend it.  Don't do things just because everyone else does them; examine yourself, taking into account your talents, motivations, responsibilities, desires, hopes, and prayers.  Then spend your valuable time on the things that matter to you, not on things that society says should matter to you.

For me that means trying to be rich in relationships, experiences, and memories.  Yes, I have to work for a living, but I continue to try to be as efficient as possible to free up time for what really matters to me:  talking to my wife, playing with my kids, reading, writing, eating; actually living.  On the day that I die, I hope they find me in my home, surrounded by my family, a book and a pen in my hand.

On the day that you die, how will we find you?

What is your main complaint?

I traveled to Chicago for meetings last week, and had a couple of hours free before they started.  I walked down the street from my hotel to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and there was introduced to a South African artist named William Kentridge, several of whose works are currently on display.  Kentridge makes animated films by drawing in charcoal and pastel on large sheets of paper; he then makes minor changes to the drawing, photographing each iteration and turning it into a film.  The effect is something like the the flipbooks of animated stick figures that we used to draw as children, except much more elaborate and much longer.

I was particularly struck by one film titled History of the Main Complaint, created in 1996 during the initial hearings of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was formed to publicly air the crimes of apartheid.  In the nearly six minute film, Soho Eckstein, a notorious South African mining magnate, lies ill on a hospital bed as doctors crouch over him to determine his illness.  When they look inside him, they discover scenes of apartheid's atrocities for which he is guilty, both directly and indirectly as a result of his race and class.  Only when Eckstein acknowledges his own role in perpetuating the crimes of apartheid does he regain consciousness.  (You can see a bootleg version of the film here to get an idea of how the drawings turn into film.  If you are in Chicago, I recommend a trip to the museum to see it yourself.)

It is a powerful film just considering the main message of reconciliation after apartheid.  But it was thought-provoking to me on a second level because of the other images that the doctors saw when the examined Eckstein, a prominent businessman:  the office equipment--typewriter, seal press, and other machines that indicate that Eckstein was pursuing profit at the expense of all else.  Part of what allowed the horrors of apartheid to continue as long as they did was that it was profitable for the ruling class to allow them to continue.  The mighty businessman failed to see how his apparently unrelated pursuit of profit was contributing to the horrors of the world around him.

A question popped into my mind, an American businessman in 2012, as I watched it:  what would Kentridge's doctors find in me if they examined me?  Surely an iPad would show up, and the latest iPhone, and a Blackberry, and maybe a computer, and what about a copy machine?  How easy it is to get caught up in the rat race of work, career, money, status, and power and not realize the effect it is having on those around me.  Happily, there is nothing on the scale of apartheid going on in Georgia right now, but what if I were to consider just the family and friends around me each day.  When I stare at one of my screens while they try to talk to me, what message does that send?  When I spend an extra hour at work, who is really losing out?   What are the unintended consequences of my quest for status and achievement?

We have to work for a living, and it is good to try to do our best at what we do.  But beware the effects of pursuing relentlessly the world's definition of success.  You are more than what you do (unlike Eckstein, as Kentridge draws him).  There is more to life than achievement; it is not the edifices of stone that you construct at work that will support you in the end; it is the soft and tender moss of relationships and memories that you form with those around you that will endure, comfort, and strengthen you.

What would Kentridge's doctors find if they looked into your life?

BOOK REVIEW: Happier At Home, by Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin brings us tales of her second happiness project in her new book, Happier at Home.  (Her first project, summarized in her book The Happiness Project, is reviewed here.)  As the title suggests, this time she focused her happiness efforts specifically on her home, after observing that so much of her happiness depends on the physical and spiritual environment of her home.  (I bet the same is true for you and me, too.)  While the focus on home somewhat narrows the scope of her resolutions, her conclusions that I found the most profound were remarkably consistent throughout both books:  Be yourself; Happiness is found in paradoxes; and Do it now.

Be yourself.  In nearly every chapter in Happier at Home, Rubin reminds herself to “Be Gretchen.”  She has found, and she describes vividly and repeatedly, that trying to be something or someone else is a major source of unhappiness.  Thus “Be Gretchen” has become the first of her “Twelve Personal Commandments.”

For example, for years of her adulthood she harbored a love of children’s literature.  She continued to re-read and cherish classics such as Little Women, The Little House in the Big Wood,  and A Little Princess.  But she felt slightly ashamed about this hobby, since she felt she “ought” to like adult literature and “should” read more educational non-fiction.  But then she remembered:  “Be Gretchen.”  Gretchen likes children’s literature, so she embraced it and started a children’s lit book club for adults.  It has proved so popular that she now has three groups running.  Instead of suffering boredom or worse reading books she “should” read, she is immensely happy reading, discussing and celebrating the literature she has always loved.

Since Socrates first admonished his students to “Know thyself,” being self aware has been a mark of maturity and wisdom.  Unfortunately modern consumerist society, in its rush to sell us more stuff, constantly tries to convince us that happiness will come once we change, upgrade, or transform ourselves, preferably with the latest new product.  Rubin finds again and again that happiness does not lie down that path.  Happiness begins with you know yourself, and then practice being yourself.

Happiness is found in paradoxes.  Early on Rubin makes the observation that the opposite of a profound truth is also true.  Thus in an early chapter on possessions, Rubin embraces the old truth that “Less is more.”  Simplicity adds to happiness.  And yet, she acknowledges, many of the things in her life that make her the happiest have added complexity to her life:  kids, her marriage, big work projects.  More is more, too.  Happiness, it turns out, is not found in the extremes, but in the paradoxes between the extremes.

Once you realize this, you begin to notice the paradoxes all around you.  The days are long, but the years are short.  It would be good to have more time to do some things; it would be good to have less time to do some things.  To be happy, you have to make other people happy; to make other people happy, you have to be happy.  

These paradoxes show that happiness does not consist of a removal of all tension, conflict, and imperfection in life.  Rather, as Rubin finds throughout her book, happiness comes in adapting yourself to the tensions of life, in resolving the conflicts, in celebrating the imperfections.  Want what you have, in other words, instead of constantly searching for the perfect.

Do it now.  The final chapter of her book is Rubin's most philosophical:  as she looks back over her year of new happiness resolutions, she realizes that in each case, Now is the time to be happy.  Now is the time to enjoy and appreciate her kids, her marriage, her neighborhood, her health.  Sure, there may be much to look forward to, but look too far forward and suddenly the Now is gone.  Wishing she were happier would have taken her nowhere.  But taking action--in come cases, quite small action--made her happier right now.  In her words, "Now is now, and now is already a long time ago."  Where does the time go?  Her suggestion is to not let it go by unnoticed.  Undertake a happiness project of your own to help cultivate an attitude of gratitude, and an appreciation of what you have right now.  Do it Now!

I'm no writer of Rubin's caliber, but with a blog about living in the present tense, you can imagine I've thought a lot about Now.  (A couple of examples are here and here.  This post explains what we mean by Present Tense Living.)  As we've said before, it is easy to live your life in any time BUT the present.  We get stuck obsessing about the past, regretting it, or wishing we could return to it.  Or, we worry about the future, or we long for it.  Either way, we miss out all that is good and worthy about Now.  You can't go back to the past.  Tomorrow may never come.  Now is all you have, so make the most of it.  This is your life, this is your time.  What will you do with it?

Make it a great day!  

Uplifted by the Decline and Fall

In 2011 I undertook and completed a reading project that I had wanted to do for years:  I read Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in its entirety.  My Folio Society edition is eight volumes, with over 2,000 pages, though the original was published serially in six volumes from 1776-1788.  This work remained the definitive history of Rome and its empire until well into the 20th Century.

Although it has been eclipsed by more modern scholarship, and its interpretations are generally seen as antiquated now, Gibbon's History remains one of the great works of Enlightenment scholarship.  It is most compelling to a modern reader because of its narrative style:  this is not history presented as a dry list of events, dates, and people; this is a narrative of brave men (and a few women) making bold moves to expand, hold, and defend a great Empire, and build a great culture.

Taking the time to read a work like this seems slightly antiquated in the age of Google and Wikipedia, where any information you can think of is at your fingertips.  Want to know who the Emperor Julian was and what he did?  You can find it in seconds.  But putting individuals into their context, understanding what came before and after great events and great men in history, and seemingly moving through history with them provides a much richer perspective on the past than what one gets from simply cherry-picking facts from Google.

It certainly took time, and more than a bit of organization, to get through such a magnum opus in one year.  I basically broke the year into eight, 6 to 7-week milestones and set a goal for myself to finish one volume by each milestone.  In general, I'd say it worked out to about 15-20 minutes a day of reading, or roughly the same amount of time it takes to watch one sitcom on my DVR, skipping the commercials.  It would be interesting to debate the merits of reading Gibbon vs. watching The Big Bang Theory daily.  For me, it was certainly time well spent.

What did I learn from the books?  Well, I was introduced to Roman emperors whose names I had heard, but I didn't really know what they had done or how they fitted in to history, e.g. Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Julian, Theodosius.  One volume covers the birth of Mohammed and the rise of Islam, subjects that were not covered in history when I was in school.  I came to realize that the first 1000 years following the time of Christ were a bloody mess of violence and death in everyday life, to a degree that would shock us today, even as jaded as we have become by foreign wars and senseless domestic shootings.  Life really was nasty, brutish, and short.

(One particularly grim episode:  a Roman general punished a wayward soldier by pulling together the tops of two adjacent pine trees, securing them with a rope; tying one arm and one leg of the poor soldier to each tree; then cutting the rope that held the trees together.  Ouch.)

But as different as life was from today, there are certain episodes and people that seem shockingly modern, or that provide inspiration all these years later.  For example:  here is how Gibbon describes the typical day of Alexander Severus, who was emperor from 222-235 A.D.:

The simple journal of his ordinary occupations exhibits a pleasing picture of an accomplished emperor, and....might well serve the imitation of modern princes.  Alexander rose early; the first moments of the day were consecrated to private devotion, and his domestic chapel was filled with the images of those heroes, who, by improving or reforming human life, had deserved the grateful reverence of posterity.  But, as he deemed the service of mankind the most acceptable worship of the gods, the greatest part of his morning hours was employed in his council, where he discussed public affairs, and determined private causes, with a patience and discretion above his years.  The dryness of business was relieved by the charms of literature:  and a portion of time was always set apart for his favorite studies of poetry, history, and philosophy.  The works of Virgil and Horace, the Republics of Plato and Cicero, formed his taste, enlarged his understanding, and gave him the noblest ideas of man and government.  The exercises of the body succeeded to those of the mind; and Alexander, who was tall, active, and robust, surpassed most of his equals in the gymnastic arts.  Refreshed by the use of the bath and a slight dinner, he resumed, with new vigor, the business of the day; and, till the hour of supper, the principal meal of the Romans, he was attended by his secretaries, with whom he read and answered the multitude of letters, memorials, and petitions, that must have been addressed to the master of the greatest part of the world. His table was served with the most frugal simplicity; and whenever he was at liberty to consult his own inclination, the company consisted of a few select friends, men of learning and virtue....The dress of Alexander was plain and modest, his demeanor courteous and affable.....

To summarize, Alexander Severus practiced morning devotions; spent time at work on public and private business; read literature to relax; took daily exercise and a daily bath; and ate simple meals with close friends.  Here we are 1800 years later, after innumerable advances in technology, medicine, psychiatry, and living standards, and yet still one could do a lot worse than follow this daily routine (which, as Gibbon observed, "might well serve the imitation of modern princes").    Talk about history coming alive!

How to Live?

I’ve been led into deep thoughts from recent random events.  First, the events:

• Two weeks ago I celebrated my birthday with my annual reading of Seneca’s On theShortness of Life.

• Yesterday I read of the death of Tim Stack, 60, CEO of Piedmont Healthcare, a prominent hospital system here in Atlanta.

• Today I saw the report of the death of Gore Vidal, 86, celebrated author.

Now, the deep thoughts:

I never met Tim Stack or Gore Vidal, but I couldn’t help thinking of each as a reference point for me: if I live to Mr. Stack’s age, I have 16 years left; if I live to Mr. Vidal’s age, I have 42 years left.  That’s a big difference.  What would I do differently today if I knew for certain that I have only 16 years left to live rather than 42?

Enter Seneca: 

“…all save a very few find life at an end just as they are getting ready to live.” 

I’ve known people for whom that is true; they look forward their entire working lives to retirement, so that they can really live, and then they die or become incapacitated and can’t do it.  It is tragic and sad when it happens.  I don’t want to do that, and if it comes to pass that I have only 16 years left, I need to get busy living.  But what if it turns out I have 42 years left?  How do I prepare for a long future life, which may not come, without passing up on too much life today, which I certainly have right now?

Getting this balance right is very difficult.  It is unrealistic for most of us to extract ourselves from common bourgeois existence to pursue leisure full time.  (I’m using “leisure” here in the classical sense, meaning activities that have intrinsic value in themselves, without regard for the ends they might achieve, like money.)   Yet at the same time, many of us realize that the hectic pace of modern American life, a treadmill of earn --> acquire --> earn more --> acquire more, with very little time devoted to leisure pursuits, probably isn’t the best way to live, either.  We know we should get off the treadmill at some point, hence the “When I retire, then….” dreams.  But should we really put off good living until then?  Do we run the risk of fulfilling Seneca’s prediction that we find life at an end just as we are getting ready to live?

Yet there seems to no good or easy time to get off the treadmill early.  We need to pay off the student loans; then we need the bigger house; then we need to put the kids through school; by then there is the beach house to take care of, too, and the wardrobe to keep current, and then electronic gadgets seem to need upgrading more frequently than ever…….

Enter Seneca again:

  …”very wretched , therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep.  By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.”

And so it is that the treadmill remains attractive because our focus rests on the fruits of our labor:  the trinkets, tokens, and totems of success that our society has deemed valuable.  But the very real risk is that we overvalue the trinkets while we undervalue the time that it takes to earn them; we assume we have an unlimited store of time from which to draw; and when that turns out not to be true, we are surprised by the shortness of our lives.  The true value of our time suddenly comes into focus, just as we run out of it; and we find ourselves with no time to really live.

So how do we find the right balance?  How can we really live throughout our lives, and not save all the good stuff for the end that may get cut short?  There are no easy or obvious answers.  But it is certainly something to think about.

“Why do you delay?  Why are you idle?  Unless you seize the day, it flees.”

                                                                                                                -Seneca