It’s Not About You

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: May 30, 2011

Over the past few weeks, America’s colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.

But, especially this year, one is conscious of the many ways in which this year’s graduating class has been ill served by their elders. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.

More important, their lives have been perversely structured. This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.

Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did. Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.

Worst of all, they are sent off into this world with the whole baby-boomer theology ringing in their ears. If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and findyourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front.

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self.

Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasn’t in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

Finally, graduates are told to be independent-minded and to express their inner spirit. But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself. As Atul Gawande mentioned during his countercultural address last week at Harvard Medical School, being a good doctor often means being part of a team, following the rules of an institution, going down a regimented checklist.

Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

Friend

The idea of a friend is a rather taken for granted one. We all assume to know what it means, but when we are pushed to articulate the concept, we can sometimes find that even a pair of best friends have different expectations of their friendship, or more specifically different degrees of commitment.

I will not be trying to exhaust the boundaries of friendship but I would like to add, for now, two settings, if I may, regarding friends. I personally believe one cannot offend one’s friend. One simply cannot, it is structurally not possible. Friendship, like all other meaningful relationships must be two sided. Idolizing some K pop singer is an example of an unmeaningful relationship. If you have come to accept an individual as your friend, you will never bear any ill intent or ill will against him/her. Your method might not be agreeable, but your intention will be pure. Hence you will not say things out of spite. You should strive to speak to warn, protect, encourage and to empower. Can you really bear to hold a well intended statement against your friend, no matter how crudely packaged and delivered? The recipient of the “offensive” statement, will know that such a statement is uttered out of concern, fear, or need to protect, and hence not be offended. Once your friendship is within grace, within each other’s grace, you will always give each other the benefit of the doubt. The key here is grace. Humans do not flourish under a climate of fear, not even under a climate of prosperity, we flourish under a climate of grace. Within a friendship enriched with grace, nothing one party would ever say could every offend the other. Many of us are already blessed to be sharing such a relationship with others, but we merely do not know the words to describe how we feel.

My next point is, within graceful friendships and other meaningful relationships, we cannot give anything away for free, that is to say they we cannot express an empty gesture within a graceful relationship. Within a graceful relationship the economy of emotion is not a zero sum economy. When one party gives, both parties gain. Every gesture of grace, enriches the bond, feeds the relationship, strengthen it so if and when a Draught of Time comes their bond will weather it and come out stronger…

If you were wondering what is my point is, here it is, my point is grace. A graceful friend is indeed hard to come by. Ghandi said that we should all strive to be the change we seek in the world. If we look around and find a lacking in grace, we should start with embodying grace and add to the pool.

It’s a truly exquisite feeling to be aware of the existence of another, to feel their existence as a sudden necessity, a feeling that is not shallow nor overbearing, merely final, like a conclusion to an endless question. Like stopping in your tracks and realizing that you have forgotten something. That is the feeling of awareness, that is what it means to not take someone for granted, that is the start of a graceful friendship.

Faculty to Ferment

I do not consider myself chronologically old, chronological age but reflects the number of years one spent on earth. It might be some kind of gauge of character, but only a gauge nonetheless. As I meet more people over the course of my life, my faith in this gauge grow weaker. Personally, I believe that maturity can be best measured by acts. Words and beliefs are one thing, actions are another. If one were to uses acts to gauge the maturity of my generation then, we are indeed an immature generation. Shot gun marriages aside, we can find senseless job hoping, patronization of prostitutes, divorces, squandering of opportunities, and the list goes on. it saddens me, because I feel that those who are enlighten are bounded by some kind of moral inclination, an inclination to bring light into dark places, to guide, show and inspire those who were not so fortunate to be clearly, cognitively conscious.

Since there are an abundance of such displays of immaturity, I could conclude that the conscious are not fulfilling their moral inclination, either that those who are conscious are of such ineffective numbers that they are structurally swept along by institutional inertia. Indulge me, and assume that position that the conscious are not fulfilling their moral inclination to lead, guide and inspire those who are still seeking to fulfil false needs.

Before I move on, let me discuss the concept of cultural industry and the creation of false needs. I cannot take credit for this powerful perspective, it was Adorno and Horkheimer who popularize this idea. The idea that modern capitalism creates via the media and the new institutions false needs, that is capitalism both creates and satisfies these false needs. True needs, postulated by Adorno and Horkheimer are the need for freedom, creativity, or even something so basic like genuine happiness. Simply based on the contrast we can spot some familiar needs, the need to be a part of a social group, the need to blend in, the need to beautiful, etc. capitalism then provides the tools, at a cost, to us to satisfy these needs. This mass enculturation threatens the pursuit of higher human qualities, if nothing else, the grounds of sheer lack of mental fitness. One of the characteristic of mass culture is its low barrier to entry, one need little intellectual labour to gain access to mass culture. Mass culture tends to be easily digestible, homogenous, short lived, easily repeatable and instantly gratifying. Instant gratification is what I personally feel is one of the main contributing factors impeding greater human realization.

A great man sacrifices the present for the future whereby a normal man sacrifices the future for the present. I contextualize this statement against the backdrop of gratification. Maths for example, when taught to children at a young age will almost always be faced with resistance. Maths is not instantly gratifying, it is not immediately useful in our lives. The tempered and steeled mind would lend great insight to a person, but this genre of gratification is many years away from the first 1+1 maths question the child learn to solve. Having a tempered and steeled mind is enormously gratifying, but such a concept would be difficult to grasp in a world of instant downloads and instant messaging. As a society, we are increasingly losing the faculty to ferment our thoughts and ideas. Not everything can be made instant, and not everything instant is necessarily better. Technology has a big part to play in this, I need not elaborate here. Once we lose this faculty to ferment, we lose a valuable channel to true human needs and realizations. To plan meaningful goals, to make sacred commitments to our communities and those we love and those we will one day come to love, these concepts are jeopardized by the culture of our times.

The culture of The Instant, fuelled the technologies of capitalism, given form by the cultural industries, spread by the media and enforced by our peers seduces us into giving up tomorrow for today by eroding our faculty to ferment thoughts; reading, writing, thinking objectively, creatively and independently.

If you are still reading at this point, you already have a greater attention span than the 55 characters generation, there is still hope for us.

I am privileged to have been able to pursue an intellectual discipline, to have been made aware of my ignorant self. 10 years ago, I thought I was a full cup, both my mind and my heart were full. Through my academic discipline I was made to realize that my full cup was in the middle of an empty swimming pool. My consciousness came at a price, a price not everyone is willing to pay, I lost the comfort knowing to gain the discomfort of inadequacy. The only constant is change, but what are we changing into?

Bubbles are made of Moments

Weekday mornings are distinct from those during the weekends in many ways, one of the distinction is the working crowd. The mass of faceless zombies trickling from HDB flats to the entrances of MRT stations like so many ants to a piece of candy on the cement floor, dressed in impractical attire like heels for climbing stairs and long sleeve shirts in a temperate climate, finishing off the look with a set of in-bud ear phones, a small and feeble attempt to create a private space within the mad squeeze that is the public transport system.

This morning, on my way downstairs enroute to breakfast with my family I took the same lift with a couple. They are a middle aged Singaporean Chinese couple, the wife would be dressed in “office wear”, and her husband would be dressed casually in polo tee and brown kakis. Of last 4 encounters I have had with them, we did not exchange a single word, more interestingly neither did they exchange a single word with each other. From the door of their flat all the way to their car which was quite a distance away, they were silent and unsmiling. Was I stalking them, nope, I was walking behind them all the way during those encounters because their car way along the path I would normally take.

The husband had a look on his face I can only interpret as a man who is unwillingly executing his duty, and his wife had a look which looked to me like someone who felt that she could have done better but settled for something much below what she could have achieved. Even after they drove off in their Hyundai, I kept trying to imagine what the other spheres of their life together are like. They must surely have a terrible sex life. It’s a crying shame I feel, for a relationship between two people, especially a marriage during this time and age to deteriorate into passive duty towards each other and their children. A sense of duty must be present of course, but it should not be the only thing keeping their relationship intact. When queried why a couple is still married, the answer should not be that it is too much hassle to get a divorce.

Are they so stretched by the vicissitudes of life that they lost interest in each other? Or are they so utterly bored of each other and know each other so well that they can function optimally without talking to each other. No more, “Good morning/night”, “Thank you’s/ your welcome”, “see you later” or “I love you”, a relationship void of words is often a relationship void of affections. Acts of service can only go so far. This couple, in my opinion is wasting their opportunities with each other. There are many who would have to go to great lengths just to hear each other’s voice, or feel their touch. But this couple allowed the mundane to rust away their affections, silence to wedge them apart. They might sleep in the same bed, but their hearts are literally worlds apart.

Sleeping together in the same room provides a unique opportunity in our conservative Asian society. We get to start and end our day beside each other, so even regardless of how busy each of our lives are we still have those first and last waking moments together, quiet bubbles of time together. How we choose to use those moments is of course a completely different issue. I would like to believe that when one wakes up beside one’s spouse, he is reminded of his promise and the reason for facing the challenges and difficulties ahead and when he goes to bed after work and he sees her smile, he knows that it was all worth it (vice versa my feminist readers).

We all need a reason, we all seek meaning is our lives. So when you have found yours don’t take it for granted. Silence erodes relationships as much as words of affection and gratitude nourish them.

That couple is not a unhappy couple for sure, but they are not exactly happy together from the looks of it, and that is a terrible way to describe a marriage.

Character Catalouge

Jason is a mechanic, and one day his flushing system was faulty. Believing himself to be a hands-on person he tried to fixed the toilet by himself. He spent 4 hours rectifying the problem but to no avail, he finally gave in and calling in a professional plumber. The plumber came, spent 5 minutes questioning Jason and another 5 minutes changing a washer and the problem was solved. He asked Jason for $100 for the service, the stunned Jason ask how can he charge $100 for 10mins of work. The plumber looked Jason in the eye and said that he was not paying for his 10 minutes but his 5 years of experience that enabled him to solve the problem in 10mins.

The moral of the story is not how experience acts as a multiplier factor when we interface with Life, but subtle aspect of differentiating experience. Experiences, or as Kant would have it, “representations” and “apprehension” are not equal in value or purpose, contextually speaking. Our different perspectives, opportunities, cultural baggage etc, etc all add to the quantity, but more importantly the quality of our experiences. However, due to a myriad of reasons such as education, exposure, peer influences our experiences might not be optimally ordered to aid us most efficiently.

Few of us know what we want, but many of us know what we don’t want. I personally believe humans to be pain avoiding creatures, as opposed pleasure seeking creatures. Think about it, would you run faster at the end leg of a marathon for the promise of an ice cream or give up the ice cream and walk hence instantly stopping the pain in your legs? Hence based on that thread of reasoning, I believe we keep a much better organized catalogue of things we don’t like as compare to things we like. The twist here is how do we know what we don’t want if we have never experienced it, part of it confluxes with the eternal tussle between youths and their elders, the weathered old man and the wild young boy. But… I digress, back to the issue of the catalogue, and I shall contextualize it against the backdrop of social relations since everyone can relate to relations with people.

As we undergo the test of time, we collect and compile the results and what we all inadvertently end up with is a robust catalogue of characteristics we are not comfortable with or even down right despise. A matrix would be formed in our heads, that is to say that one might tolerate a particular characteristic in a friend but not in one’s spouse for example, this “Character Catalogue” is multi-dimensional. This character catalogue is unfortunately, framed negatively. That is to say, we would be able to list more characteristics we detest as compare to those we find enduring. Hence the majority of us are fault finders, stereotypical, judgemental or even blatantly discriminating.

This is a self defence mechanism to protect us from pain and hurt, rather than the procurement of pleasure. Which is why I reckon people who have a more robust Character Catalogues would be more discerning when it comes to establishing relationships. Why we have 10years or more friendships with people whom we might not even exchange more than pleasantries to if we were to be introduced to them today, I feel this is the reason. When our Catalogue was short, non-exhaustive, we were more accommodating, less judgemental, we love freely, share our moments easily, our relationships would be more textured and varied, we accepted them even when they were not perfect and over time they have proven themselves to be stellar friends. But with a black catalogue, our subconscious steer us away from imaginary “potential” hurt and pain, and before we know it we are surrounded by people who are almost exactly like ourselves. Deceived by self constructed social proof, we falsely feel secure in our similarities and become stubborn (“that’s me or that’s how I do things”) in our ways.

Imagine if we were to frame and channel this catalogue positively. Seek out the good in people, accept that they are not perfect, just like we ourselves are not perfect. Have a list of positive qualities we hope to achieve and surround ourselves with people who are imbued with such positive characteristics. By doing this we create the pain of being surrounded by people who are better than ourselves, and being pain avoiding, our sub-consciousness would spur better ourselves. Positive pain, it’s the kind of pain in your legs after a good training session, the kind of pain which tells us that we are growing and becoming stronger.

Jason and the plumber had different skill sets, different repertoire. But one set was more relevant than the other when it came to fixing the plumbing. Each one of us have our own character catalogues, but some catalogues are more robust, better consolidated, and more relevant to leading a wholesome, enriching and all rounded life. Generate the positive pain today. ;)