I’m writing these both on my iPad as I drive (get driven, more accurately) to the airport, to head back to Iowa.
It’s interesting marrying someone from a less affluent background. I think it gives both of us a bit of a prod, in terms of growing. My wife grew up a bit jealous of the wealthy people around her, and sometimes judgmental about the way some of the wealthy people behaved, not being respectful to the people who served them, acting entitled, and often not working hard, yet having so much, which seemed unfair to her.
Funny thing is, as a youth I also had these same judgments about wealthy people, which was extra uncomfortable, since I realized that included me. Few things rankle a person as much as having someone else point out a fault in them that they already know about and are bothered by.
I’m very empathic and aware of what’s going on in other people, so try as she might, I’m usually aware of when my wife’s judgments about wealth are directed at me. She’s always apologetic and I think she would stop if she were able to just turn it off, but alas, it is not that easy. Also she might be justified in her judgments of me 😅
I grew up with a grandfather that started off kind of poor, worked really hard, and through a lot of investing luck along with work and thoughtfulness became wealthy. And then a direct family that was able to work less hard because of that. So I got both messages internalized. 'Work hard' and 'you don’t need to work so hard.' In terms of habits, the one's I ended up acquiring were not hard-work habits. They were take it easy habits. But I also had the 'work hard' messaging, so there was a lot of guilt.
Ultimately, through the lens of reason, I came to the conclusion that it was my duty to give back to the society that had given me so much. It also resonated with my thoughts as a child. Society had problems, people were unhappy, there was a lot that could be fixed and made better, so I should try and do that.
It also resonates with my spiritual beliefs, which go something like this: all is God. To serve man (or woman, or animal, or plant…) is to serve God. I also wanted to express my gratitude, and I believe selfless service is an important part of spiritual practice. Also, an important element of a happy, meaningful life. Science agrees. So overall, at least intellectually I'm in favor of working hard in service to others. Which makes my actions when I chill and take it easy cause cognitive dissonance.
Speaking of science, I’m reading through some books in the positive psychology field. It’s nice to see which techniques are backed up by science and some of the nuance behind what works and what doesn’t. Which the good scientists make sure to highlight, as opposed to the pop-psychology, self-help book-salesmen type people, who tend to gloss over the important details and nuance, ultimately making for catchy-er and less useful information, as well as just plain wrong stuff, since they don't really care about being accurate. Currently I’m reading a book called “Flourish” by Martin Seligman. He wrote a book called “Authentic Happiness” about positive psychology, but then revised his thinking to include more than just “happiness.” Let’s see if I can remember what the acronym stands for… PERMA
Purpose (beyond self), Emotions (positive ones), Relationships, Mastery, Accomplishment. That’s his collection of things that people pursue for their own sake, if my memory serves. I’ve only begun the book, so there’s probably more to it than that.
Anyhoo, I’ve been thinking about what makes for a satisfying life. I think I’ve heard the phrases, “the pleasant life” along with “the meaningful life” and maybe one more. But ultimately, it has to do with oneself, with what you want, I guess. But what do you want, really? And maybe it’s not just that, since science says we are often terrible at predicting what will make us happy. I guess this is why philosophers have been talking about it forever.
And though I don't have a satisfying conclusion or solution, at least I'm in good company, as the various smarty-pants philosophers all seem to have taken their own stab at "what makes the good life" but either none of them has figured it out, or at the least, none has been able to reliably impart the answer, or we'd have a lot more people who felt like they were living the good life. This is eventually what soured me on most philosophy: the fact that people were still miserable, and so for all their thinking and writing, they hadn't actually solved anybody's problems. Maybe it's more complicated than that, like a theoretical physicist that makes important discoveries, but requires an engineer or such to make something practical out of it. At some point I decided it was time to try actually making something out of all the theory, and it was at that point that I started discovering that a lot of the smart sounding philosophy was actually not useful in practice, or even worse, made one less happy. Some of it was helpful, and that's what I've kept, but it's by no means complete.
Going to end now, this post has dragged on long enough, and I don't have a punch-y solution, which I'd probably be required to come up with out of some orifice if I was writing this for someone who wanted to earn money from it. Glad I'm not!
I Out ;-)
