Mark Kingwell, the author of In Pursuit of Happiness: better living from Plato to Prozac writes:
We all know that some books work like ingenious traps.
They begin innocuously, articulating a few genial sentiments or
unobjectionable home truths designed to lure you down the false path of a
deceptive familiarity. You stride ahead without fear. By subtle steps,
each plotted with argument or example or statistic, you are moved closer
to the place where artfully strewn leaves cover a hole in the ground.
You know very well what is coming, or anyway suspect it, but at some
point - if the author is any good - you fall, on cue, into conviction.
Aha! You now think what the author thinks.
Maybe you're happy to find yourself there, and make
yourself comfortable. Maybe you're feisty and seethe from your ignoble
position in the trap, scanning memory and logic and the rest of the
mental horizon for a means of escape. Either way, the trap affords
complicated forms of pleasure. As trapping games go, there are not many
better or more interesting than walking through a good book of argument.
Not all books . . . seek to ensnare the reader in the
author's own convictions . . . I faced a choice between setting a trap
in the traditional philosophical manner, ascending to the high ground of
objective detachment to observe the results, and doing something quite
different: beginning an intimate conversation with one reader at a time.
Books on deep and difficult topics can trumpet and they can whisper;
they can declaim and they can hint. But for me, they work best when they
just talk, in a manner as close as possible to the true voice of their
author.
Okay then. You’ll find that I don’t write as good well as Kingwell. I’m not a natural-born killer with a pen. I lack the literary expertise required to turn my limited understanding—concepts that I struggle with and only intermittently grasp—into words.
Although I know where I’m coming from, and where this talk will ultimately lead, I am far from certain how best to tell the tale. Still, I’ll try to go about this in, as Mark Kingwell suggests, “a manner as close as possible to [my] true voice”.
A man once contacted a large number of celebrities, sportsmen, stars and famous people. “How do you achieve success in life?” he asked them, and then later collated their responses into a book. Charles J. Acquisto’s Wisdom to Grow On basically boils down to:
- Continuously grow and educate yourself by reading and listening.
- Actively engage with life by persevering or striving.
- Focus on small steps in your day-to-day living—use time wisely, in other words.
- Work on maintaining harmonious relationships through love and honesty.
- Work towards a greater good in the form of a religion, cause, dream or personal goal.
- Stay happy by maintaining a positive attitude.
- Accept everything that comes your way, and don’t take yourself too seriously.
- Be the change that you would like to see.
Most of this advice is what you’d expect. None of it particularly moved my earth, but there was nothing that you’d argue with.
The strongest message that came through, though, was the exhortation to be true to your self. ‘Live authentically’ spelled out letter after letter. Only then, the respondents insisted, will a person be serene. Only then, as Anne Wilson Schaef puts it, will you be “in tune with your own inner guidance, awareness, integrity, spirituality and morality”. It’s good to demonstrate who one is by doing what one loves and is drawn to. ‘Dare to be different. Dare to be your deeper self.’
I find it ironical that people need to be told to be themselves. Sea anemones don’t. Salmon don’t. Even our pets need little instruction. It just goes to show how thoroughly our behavior and thinking is pervaded from without. On the one hand we live in an age of information, but on the other there’s obviously a clear and present need for us to learn how to ignore most of it.
