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

Materialism Fails, Again

It turns out that not only does materialism hurt your kids, but it hurts your marriage, too. The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported on a recent study that looked at how couples’ attitudes toward money affected their marriages:

Couples who said money wasn’t important to them scored about 10% to 15% better on measures of relationship quality, such as marriage stability, than couples in which both partners were materialistic.

The effects are additive, too: couples where both spouses were materialistic were worse off than couples where only one spouse was.

"Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at,” says Jason Carroll, a BYU professor or family life and lead author of the study. “There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other.”

Interestingly, it was the attitude to money that made the difference—regardless of how much money the couples actually had. So I guess money can’t buy happiness, after all.

One obvious question: how did they define materialism? I haven’t seen the actual study, but apparently the authors asked participants to rate how important it is to them to have lots of money and things. In a consumerist society, it is impossible not to have some level of interest in having money and things. I think the line is crossed when the pursuit or maintenance of stuff begins to crowd out human relationships. If your possessions are more important to you than people, then your marriage, or your relationship with your kids, is naturally going to suffer.

The late, great Steve Jobs was quoted in 1993 saying, “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me….Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.” Doing something wonderful isn’t limited to grand projects like upending industries and creating desirable electronic devices (as Steve did). Wonderful might be coming home earlier to help your spouse with dinner. Wonderful can be offering to take the kids for a morning so a spouse can have a break. Wonderful would almost certainly be putting down the Blackberry and listening to your kids talking to you.

I’ll bet you can think of at least one way where your focus on money or stuff is getting in the way of an important relationship. Why not try, just once, to put the relationship ahead of your wallet, and see what happens. Let me know in the comments how it works for you.

BOOK REVIEW: Carte Blanche

Every few years, the estate of Ian Fleming authorizes a new James Bond novel to be written by a leading mystery or thriller author of the time. Carte Blanche is the fifth in this series, penned by Jeffrey Deaver, bestselling thriller author and editor of the Best American Mystery Stories 2009.

Between 1951 and his death in 1964, Ian Fleming wrote 9 novels and 12 short stories featuring super spy James Bond. For anyone whose knowledge of Bond comes exclusively from the popular movies, the character that appears in the books may be something of a surprise. Yes, Fleming's Bond is a bon vivant who regularly indulges his taste for cars, women, and liquor. But the literary Bond is thoughtful, often brooding, and sometimes melancholy. He is apparently looking for true love out of his flings with beautiful women, and he daydreams about leaving the service to settle down. He likes nice things, yes, but his Bentley is 20 years old, and he also has a charming taste for simplicity. This complex personality rarely, if ever, comes through in the more purely hedonistic movie character. (Sean Connery in the early movies, and especially Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, come closest to conveying the complex character of the book Bond.)

Fleming's writing style was admirably efficient, with few needless words and generally a snappy narrative flow. His attention to detail gives the books much of their cultural cachet: he freely sprinkled brand names of watches, and liquor, and clothes in the story, a sort of product placement guru before his time. This adds immensely to the plausibility of the tales, as well as their desirability.

Deaver is not as efficient with his words as Fleming, and perhaps overdoes it on details in some places, but overall his story is a faithful imitation of the Fleming style. Deaver places his Bond squarely in the 21st century, with a bewildering alphabet soup of bureaucratic agencies for Bond to navigate (and a helpful glossary in the back for the reader to follow), current hip locations like Dubai and Cape Town, and very cool technology, including a few iPhone apps that would certainly be the hit of any cocktail party. (The eavesdropping app could make for some quite mischievous fun at a party.) Deaver's Bond Girls are also much more modern, in some cases proving indispensable to his success (rather than just serving as decorative accents).

The plot involves Bond trying to decipher the meaning behind various pieces of intelligence that seem to point to an unspecified act of violence and destruction to be carried out by Severan Hydt, the founder of a large, British-based waste management firm known as Green Way. Like all the Bond novels, what happens isn't so important as how it happens: Bond travels in style around the world, dodging shadowy characters, feuding with competing government agents, and enjoying the company of beautiful women, some of whom help and some who hinder his progress. Deaver even proves equal to the task of matching Fleming's knack for double-entendre female names by introducing us to the vivacious Felicity Willing (or Felicity Willful, as we are told she is sometimes called).

While the action is exciting, as is typical in this genre things get wrapped up just a little too conveniently to be believable. But in the end, who cares? It is a wild ride along the way, and Deaver successfully captures that feeling of slight envy at the glamorous life of Bond that Fleming was so good at inducing. Sure, it is ridiculous to think that a government agent can afford a new Bentley Continental GT, or that a supposedly secret agent would drive a car designed to capture attention. But if I WERE a secret agent, I would certainly try to get one too!

Like Fleming often did, Deaver creates a bad guy that is fascinatingly repulsive because he is not only criminal, but also creepy. In this case, the villain is obsessed with decay--in objects, in nature, and in people. Even his female companion is forced to eschew the glamorous hair and make-up jobs that are typical for villain consorts, in favor of unkempt locks and obvious wrinkles. This creepiness, and the criminal activity it inspires, makes Carte Blanche a worthy addition to the Bond bookshelf.

Materialism Fails

I was fascinated by a news item I saw yesterday here on Britain's Daily Telegraph site, where it was reported that a recent UNICEF study concludes that in Britain materialism is rampant.  Indeed, according to the report,

materialism has come to dominate family life in Britain as parents 'pointlessly' amass goods for their children to compensate for their long working hours.

One researcher goes on to conclude that:

While children would prefer time with their parents to heaps of consumer goods, [their] parents seem to find themselves under tremendous pressure to purchase a surfeit of material goods for their children.

I haven't found a similar study focused on America, but it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that materialism is rampant here, too.  The observation of Reg Bailey, chief executive of Britain's Mothers Union, speaking about British society, could apply equally well to American society:

I think it is an issue with the nature of our society, that so often we’ve placed a dependence on things rather than being.

As I've written before here, contentment comes from not from seeking stuff, but from seeking REM:  relationships, experiences, and memories.  British kids are crying out for time from their parents; according to the UNICEF study, their parents seem to despair of giving it to them because they are working too hard to provide stuff for them instead. But stuff can never provide long-term contentment, because the thrill of acquisition never lasts; pretty soon we adapt to the new thing, the feeling of elation wears off, and we turn to pursuing the next new thing.  What a treadmill to be stuck on!  Lord willing, I will be able to recognize when I am on it....

Materialism certainly is a problem in America, but I wonder if its effects are as severe as in Britain, which in an earlier UNICEF report ranked worst of 21 developed countries for child welfare.  According to the Telegraph article,

British children were twice as likely as the average to have been drunk by the age of 15, and significantly less likely to be in two parent families than those elsewhere, were more likely to have tried drugs and had one of the worst diets in the developed world.

Why has materialism seemingly had a more deleterious effect in Britain than in America or other developed countries?  Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood, has a hypothesis:

We are teaching our children, practically from the moment they are born, that the one thing that matters is getting more stuff.  We are probably the most secular society in the world, we do not have the counterbalance of religion but at the same time we are a very driven society very into progress and making money. (emphasis added)

According to the Scripture of that religion that Britain used to have, Jesus warned the crowd, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."  (Luke 12:15).  Be rich not in stuff, but in relationships.  Pursue experiences with those you love instead of another gadget.  Stockpile memories, not shirts.  You, your children, indeed all your loved ones, will be the happier for it.