Yesterday morning, as I was walking to the coffee shop to do some work, I noticed how beautiful everything is. This is something that I notice with some frequency, but in the Spring I notice it much more regularly. New leaves are such a vibrant green, flowers are blooming, and people seem happy. They walk down the street with looks on their faces that say, “It’s so nice out!” Today it’s a little on the warm side for my taste, but to be able to go outside in a T-shirt is certainly refreshing. Furthermore, the sun is shining, and as it’s the last day of classes, people on campus are generally in good spirits. Today is easy to enjoy.
As far as enjoyment goes, a lot of things are easy to get wrong. First of all, it’s easy to forget that enjoying life is something that you should do. This isn’t true for everyone, and it affects different people in different ways, but for me it manifests itself in an inclination to feel like I’m doing something wrong if I’m enjoying myself too much. It was only recently that I realized that when someone asks me “do you want whipped cream on that?” the correct answer is usually yes.
Many people want to do things that they enjoy, and many people actually do them, but most of us think of that as being something selfish, or less judgmentally as morally indifferent. I think this is wrong. If you were the last person on Earth, it would be better for you to enjoy yourself than to not. If you are going through life without any enjoyment, you need to rethink your life plan.
These observations need a little qualifying, since enjoyment is such a broad term. Here are a few things I’ve enjoyed today:
1. Eating a healthy breakfast this morning: For breakfast I ate yogurt with bran flakes and granola. The taste isn’t thrilling, but I find it agreeable enough. The part that I enjoy is knowing that it’s good for me, and knowing that it will lead to me feeling better throughout the day.
2. Walking to campus and back: As I’ve said, the weather is wonderful today and easy to enjoy.
3. Teaching the last class of the semester: This was enjoyable on a number of levels. First of all there wasn’t a ton of material that I had to cover, and it was a topic that I’m familiar with and enjoy talking about. I was in a good mood, and the class seemed to be as well. Secondly, it was rewarding. The students handed in one page reflections on the course as a whole, and many of them had positive things to say about the course, as well as observing that they have changed as a result of it. This gives me a sense of purpose in life, knowing that I can help people to become aware of their connections to those around them, and that they may make conscious life decisions as a result.
4. Drinking some good whisky: Ok, so this part hasn’t actually happened yet, but I’m looking forward to it. In fact, anticipating drinking it is something that I find enjoyable in itself. In any case, there’s an event being put on by a couple faculty members: they’re bringing a couple bottles of scotch in exchange for an audience for their bagpiping.
The reason I went through a few of these things is that I think it’s important that we think about the different ways that we experience enjoyment. Many things we do and experience in life can please us, and it’s for the best if we take a moment to enjoy them.
One final thought: although I think that personal enjoyment is important, I’m not advocating that everyone go out and do whatever they think will give them the most pleasure at any given moment. First of all, being good involves acting rightly toward others (a topic to be covered in the future), but equally important is the fact that getting the most out of life sometimes involves delaying gratification. In fact, I think that’s a topic for another time.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Obligations to Ourselves
Some parts of trying to be good I do pretty well at, while other parts I struggle with. As time goes on, I plan to cover some of each of these. A big part of what I do here will be to try to figure out what it means to be good at all. ‘Good’ is a pretty general word, and being human is certainly not an activity that comes with an accepted standard of perfection. Setting aside the issue of being good at it, what it really means to even be human is something that people have been asking since there were people.
Part of trying to be good will involve trying to act rightly toward others. This has a particular side (acting rightly toward the individuals around me) and it has a general side (acting rightly toward the inhabitants of the world at large). What each of these means is something that I will have to deal with. I think I do pretty well with the second one—I’m very conscious of how my actions impact the world around me, and I generally stick to a way of life that’s compatible with the well-being of others. The first one I’m not always great at. I do ok when it comes to friends and family, but when it comes to my interactions with strangers and acquaintances, my social anxiety frequently overwhelms my attention to others. In short, I suspect that my shyness often comes across as standoffishness.
However, today’s post is not about my relationship to others. It’s about me. Ask yourself this: If I were the last person on Earth, what would it mean for me to be good? Some might think that this question is meaningless; morality deals with the relationships and interactions between people, so if there were only one person left, there would no longer be such a thing as morality. I don’t think that this is true. I wouldn’t blame this last person for unhappily sitting around, listlessly bemoaning their loneliness and waiting for death, but I wouldn’t call that living rightly either. What am I getting at? I think that being good requires seeking personal happiness.
Now that I’ve spent three paragraphs introducing my topic (hopefully as the blogging goes on, I’ll get better at getting to the point without so much introduction), I’m realizing that this isn’t something that I’ll be able to cover in a single post. Actually, I’m realizing that this post will just be an introduction for what’s to come. I’m inclined to think that happiness involves two parts: enjoying the present, and planning to enjoy the future. Next post’s topic: Enjoyment.
Part of trying to be good will involve trying to act rightly toward others. This has a particular side (acting rightly toward the individuals around me) and it has a general side (acting rightly toward the inhabitants of the world at large). What each of these means is something that I will have to deal with. I think I do pretty well with the second one—I’m very conscious of how my actions impact the world around me, and I generally stick to a way of life that’s compatible with the well-being of others. The first one I’m not always great at. I do ok when it comes to friends and family, but when it comes to my interactions with strangers and acquaintances, my social anxiety frequently overwhelms my attention to others. In short, I suspect that my shyness often comes across as standoffishness.
However, today’s post is not about my relationship to others. It’s about me. Ask yourself this: If I were the last person on Earth, what would it mean for me to be good? Some might think that this question is meaningless; morality deals with the relationships and interactions between people, so if there were only one person left, there would no longer be such a thing as morality. I don’t think that this is true. I wouldn’t blame this last person for unhappily sitting around, listlessly bemoaning their loneliness and waiting for death, but I wouldn’t call that living rightly either. What am I getting at? I think that being good requires seeking personal happiness.
Now that I’ve spent three paragraphs introducing my topic (hopefully as the blogging goes on, I’ll get better at getting to the point without so much introduction), I’m realizing that this isn’t something that I’ll be able to cover in a single post. Actually, I’m realizing that this post will just be an introduction for what’s to come. I’m inclined to think that happiness involves two parts: enjoying the present, and planning to enjoy the future. Next post’s topic: Enjoyment.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Ignoring Jesus
I think I might need to ignore Jesus. Well, at least this one thing he said: ‘when you give money to charity, don’t go blowing your trumpet.’ This idea is a strongly held norm in our own society as well; you can be as good as you want, but don’t go talking about it and making other people feel bad. It’s widely held to be pretty rude (and a little hypocritical) to do something good and then follow it up with, ‘Hey everybody, look what I just did!’ Actually, it might help to extend my paraphrase of Jesus’ words a little bit more: ‘when you give money to charity, don’t go blowing your trumpet, because then you’ll be like the hypocrites who only do this to get the accolades of others.’ In other words: be good, but don’t just do it for the admiration of those around you.
The question I’ve been wrestling with lately is whether we might be better off focusing on the ‘don’t do it for the accolades’ part of these words instead of the ‘don’t toot your own horn’ part. In fact, evidence shows that when people talk about the good that they’re doing (in a non-hypocrite-seeking-accolades kind of way), it makes other people more likely to start doing some good of their own. You might notice this when charities call to solicit donations: Rather than asking for what you can spare, they’ll mention what the person they just spoke to committed to giving. This helps you realize, ‘hey, other people are being generous, I should be too.’
Peter Singer brought this up in his recent book, The Life You Can Save (which I’m recommending to everybody I talk to). If we all talk about the good things we do, the world just might end up being a better place.
There are a number of impulses and drives competing within me when I think about this. Most prominently, there’s the drive to modesty. I can talk about these things in the abstract (for example, suggesting that ‘people’ should give a higher percentage of their income to charity), but once I start talking about things on a personal level (‘no, I won’t buy that shirt, it was made in a sweatshop’) I quickly become conscious of how others will perceive my comments as a judgment of their own decisions. I'm not naturally inclined toward this sort of personal interference.
Although I’ve noted how uncomfortable it makes me to be doing this, I'm obviously here blogging nonetheless. This is because there are two other impulses which, at least for the moment, are overriding this fear of coming across as preachy. The first is a general drive to promote discourse: I’m a strong believer that everything important should be talked about as freely as possible. Concealing things, ignoring differences, or hiding truths only serves to slow the tide of progress. Combined with this is my drive to do what’s right. If I can contribute to making the world a better place by sharing my methods of being in the world at the expense of my own comfort, then so be it.
In conclusion, I’m starting this blog. I plan to chronicle my own attempt at living rightly in the world, with the goal of both sharing what I’m doing with others, and reaching out to others who can help me to become a better person.
The question I’ve been wrestling with lately is whether we might be better off focusing on the ‘don’t do it for the accolades’ part of these words instead of the ‘don’t toot your own horn’ part. In fact, evidence shows that when people talk about the good that they’re doing (in a non-hypocrite-seeking-accolades kind of way), it makes other people more likely to start doing some good of their own. You might notice this when charities call to solicit donations: Rather than asking for what you can spare, they’ll mention what the person they just spoke to committed to giving. This helps you realize, ‘hey, other people are being generous, I should be too.’
Peter Singer brought this up in his recent book, The Life You Can Save (which I’m recommending to everybody I talk to). If we all talk about the good things we do, the world just might end up being a better place.
There are a number of impulses and drives competing within me when I think about this. Most prominently, there’s the drive to modesty. I can talk about these things in the abstract (for example, suggesting that ‘people’ should give a higher percentage of their income to charity), but once I start talking about things on a personal level (‘no, I won’t buy that shirt, it was made in a sweatshop’) I quickly become conscious of how others will perceive my comments as a judgment of their own decisions. I'm not naturally inclined toward this sort of personal interference.
Although I’ve noted how uncomfortable it makes me to be doing this, I'm obviously here blogging nonetheless. This is because there are two other impulses which, at least for the moment, are overriding this fear of coming across as preachy. The first is a general drive to promote discourse: I’m a strong believer that everything important should be talked about as freely as possible. Concealing things, ignoring differences, or hiding truths only serves to slow the tide of progress. Combined with this is my drive to do what’s right. If I can contribute to making the world a better place by sharing my methods of being in the world at the expense of my own comfort, then so be it.
In conclusion, I’m starting this blog. I plan to chronicle my own attempt at living rightly in the world, with the goal of both sharing what I’m doing with others, and reaching out to others who can help me to become a better person.
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