Soul Shelter

(This post is an installment of CommonSensical, a periodic feature here at Soul Shelter in which we offer timeless words from thinkers and artists new and old on the subject of pursuing fulfillment and protecting one’s soul.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance,” first published in 1841, is one of the most inspiring texts I’ve ever encountered. It reads like a gospel for anybody who’s looking to dedicate him or herself to the pursuit of a personally fulfilling life. And because in Emerson’s day such a pursuit often demanded a brave parting of ways with convention, a casting off of societal mores (and still does in our own day, to a lesser degree), “Self Reliance” has a lot to say about courage, inspiration, and the lessons we ought to take from the triumphs and accomplishments of the famous lives that went before us.

I return to “Self Reliance” often, and it never fails to reverberate anew. Here are some of its highlights (and these are highlights only, a mere sampling from the great 30,000 word text).

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. … A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility… Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. …

See another recent Soul Shelter post presenting a similar idea — albeit much less gloriously: the value of keeping a notebook so our “spontaneous impressions” don’t flutter away.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. … A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Here Emerson states the Big Idea of Soul Shelter, which we phrase this way on our “About” page: “All too often a job is just a job, uninspiring or worse. Why is this so? Can things be otherwise? If not, then what changes might we make in order to devote ourselves to work that feels more meaningful?”

What’s Emerson’s solution?

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. … [But] society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. … It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. … Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. … I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. … What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. … It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. … But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. …

Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. …

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. …

The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. … But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, ‘Who are you, Sir?’ Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. …

In Emerson’s view, inspiration is active, not passive. The inspired individual, rather than being the lucky recipient of frequent dispatches direct from some angelic muse, is more likely somebody who participates in the power of accomplishments preceding him or her. In other words, the truly inspired person does not wait in a room for an angel to visit, but goes out and collects and samples the fruits of others’ inspiration, closely examining just why this or that inspired work succeeds, and applying the lessons of its success to his or her own talents.

So the self-reliant individual learns to stand before an enduring creation—or ponder the achievements of another—without being cowed or worshipful, and to engage another’s success and synthesize it with his own unique potential.

To be self-reliant in this way, Emerson insists, is to “live in the present … above time,” in a place where ideas of consequence and beauty are abundant, and self-trust is as natural as the existence of a rose.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. …

If we live truly, we shall see truly. … The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. …

I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. … It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. …

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. … We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

The prophetic power of Emerson’s admonishment here always gets me. Who can read such a thing and not feel the irresistible impulse to stand up at last and take arms against his sea of troubles, to set out on the Heroic Journey toward happiness, creative fulfillment, and a balanced and befitting life?

Immediately Emerson goes on to address the problematic American pragmatism that tends to make us timid once an adventuresome undertaking fails to go as we’d hoped. From what I know of American measures of success, these observations hold all too true today.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ’studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. …

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. …

Now, I don’t mean to be too timid and “quote a sage” instead of self-reliantly trusting myself, but that last line is one I ought to plaster to the wall above my desk. Such a simple and powerful truth is too easily forgotten.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. … Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. … Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. …

He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. …

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

So there’s “Self Reliance” in severe abridgement. Find the whole masterful text online, or better yet, buy a volume of Emerson for lifelong reference.

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(This post is an installment of CommonSensical, a periodic feature here at Soul Shelter in which we offer timeless words from thinkers and artists new and old on the subject of earning one’s living while protecting one’s soul.)

The British writer Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was a contemporary and acquaintance of the most significant Romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley. At age 17, Lamb had entered employment in a London office of the East India Company, where he continued to work as a clerk and accountant for 36 years. The “confinement of an office” was Lamb’s livelihood for all but ten years of his adult existence. The avocation of literature, however, always remained his primary passion.

Lamb’s essay “The Superannuated Man” was penned in 1825, immediately following his unexpected retirement from the office. It’s a bittersweet reflection on the pricelessness of personal freedom — and Lamb’s surprisingly mixed feelings upon his “deliverance” from a life of drudgery.

Reading it today, one can’t help but note how little has changed in nearly 200 years. Back then, just as now, being retired was a condition you craved and feared in equal measure. Also, we see that what we call “office life” is nothing new. Lamb speaks of his long-frustrated desire to escape his daily tedium — something many modern readers, caught between earning a living and having a life, can surely can relate to. “The Superannuated Man” begins:

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance…

Lamb had been delivered, at age 50, from his dreary, desk-bound career — and dreary it was indeed, he assures us. Even Sunday, his one day of freedom per week, had tormented him because it always proved so short-lived. Vacations were hard on him for the same reason. He got a week per year. Most Americans today, as we all know too well, are lucky to get two.

…Besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the week came round … was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom…

I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul…

This seemingly endless condition of drudgery had begun to depress Mr. Lamb. One of his colleagues happened to take note of his low spirits. Next thing Lamb knew, he found himself summoned to the boss’s office.

The eldest partner began a formal harangue to me on the length of my services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time…[he] ended with a proposal, to which his three partners have a grave assent, that I should accept from the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary — a magnificent offer!

But once his initial jubilation had passed, the newfound freedom of retirement bewildered Lamb. He hardly knew what to do with himself. Possessing such an overabundance of time, he was also surprised to find himself feeling depressed again:

…For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the Old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty-years’ confinement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.

Suddenly given the opportunity to live however he should choose to, Lamb can’t help brooding upon the subject of how much life he has already resigned to employment in an office.

…I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people’s time, not his…

But he can’t deny, either, that all his time spent in the office was also life, and surely counted for something — maybe even counted for more than he’d thought. After all, he’d had friendships at work, and he’d derived a certain pride and self-worth from doing his job well. In fact, a part of him began to wish he hadn’t retired (had desk-life really been as miserable as he’d sometimes believed?)

…My old desk; the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. Devil take me if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if I had not– at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six and thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then after all? or was I a coward simply? Well, it is too late to repent, and I also know that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. It shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old cronies….

I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel…

Here Lamb beautifully observes an ironic truth that many a retiree can understand. Having “grown to his desk,” and having come to loathe his “prison” condition, he nevertheless sees that all passing time is precious. Whenever we cross a threshold and find ourselves forced to recognize an era’s conclusion, we distinctly feel this preciousness of time and wish we’d made more of what we were given (no matter how passionately we’d cursed the daily routines before). Maybe, given more time, we might have found more to appreciate. We might have learned something more about ourselves and our colleagues.

Now, Lamb finds himself adrift in a strange, unburdened existence.

…Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction of season. I do not know the day of the week, or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in it distance from, or propinquity to the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights’ sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, etc. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sat as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations… What is gone of black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a holiday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holiday.

In the end, of course, he not only accepts his new condition but learns to cherish it. And his newfound freedom teaches him that slowness, inactivity, and thoughtfulness should not be undervalued.

I have Time for everything…. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round — and what is it all for? A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him ‘Nothing-To-Do;’ he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those cotton mills? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down… I am no longer clerk to the firm of _______, etc. I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens…

Lamb’s freedom also brings him to reflect that he’d played his part well and offered society his service. Surely there was honor in that. But still, between the lines here, don’t we glimpse a man haunted by regrets? A man, perhaps, who wishes he’d done something different with his life.

…I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked taskwork, and have the rest of the day to myself.

Time is precious indeed, and we do well to spend ours wisely.

(Read “The Superannuated Man” in its entirety here)

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“We proceeded on.”

These three words pervade the justly famous journals of Lewis & Clark. They hold a metaphorical significance that I find endlessly inspiring, and capture the essential spiritual achievement of the expedition of 1804-1806.

Legendary trailblazers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark have long been a subject of fascination to American history buffs while being remembered primarily as a subject of … well, homework, by most of the rest of us.

I suppose it was a long-lasting residual effect of my own school-day boredom, but I’d always thought that the Lewis & Clark story was overrated. In my college years, this assumption took the form of arrogant “enlightenment.” Okay, these guys journeyed into the unknown and all that—but weren’t they merely functionaries of Manifest Destiny?—you know, that dubious enterprise by which an imperialist American government laid claim to territories already inhabited for millennia by indigenous peoples?

Well, being a newcomer to the Pacific Northwest, and given that I’m working on a new book partly set in the region, I concluded recently that this Lewis & Clark business deserved some looking-into. What was all this about the Native American woman Sacagawea? About Clark adopting her half-Shoshone, half-French children? About Clark’s slave, York, coming along and being the first person of African descent ever seen by the Native Americans along the way? What was this about Lewis believing the expedition had proved a failure? Lewis being a manic depressive? Lewis killing himself!?

Perhaps there was a compelling human drama there after all, a story as rich and complicated and epic in scope as many another iconic moment in our national history.

I decided Lewis & Clark should finally get the attention I’d refused them for my entire public-school education. So I started by touring a Smithsonian exhibition marking the expedition’s bicentennial. Then I plunged into Brian Hall’s magnificent fictional recreation of the Lewis & Clark story, the unfortunately titled novel, I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company. Some time later, I read a second novel on the theme. And finally, just this month, I turned to that blessedly dependable interpreter of great past events, filmmaker Ken Burns.

Burns’s four-hour documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, illuminates the two-and-a-half-year Jefferson-commissioned expedition in its suspenseful essence. Yes, suspenseful! Granted, we all know what happened: With immense confidence and acumen a Dynamic Duo spearheaded a party of thirty-odd able-bodied men (and one woman), pushing through that uncharted expanse between the Mississippi to the Pacific coast, braving roaring rivers, Indian warriors, grizzly bears, and winter starvation, even while mapping the country, documenting new species of plants and animals, and recording scenic impressions along the way.

But somehow, in defiance of our staid assumptions regarding Lewis & Clark, Ken Burns returns us to the real-time experience of the journey itself. In his hands, the spirit of the historic undertaking (read: “We proceeded on”) begins to mesmerize. Watching Burns’s beautiful film, I couldn’t help pondering all the implications of what it really means to commit oneself wholeheartedly to an adventure—be it physical or spiritual—to “proceed on” and push through to the accomplishment of a goal.

It’s not incidental that Burns’s film should affect me so personally. The lauded documentarian articulates his main philosophy as a filmmaker in one pungent phrase that speaks perfectly to the power of his style:

Meaning accrues in duration.

The longer we let ourselves consider a history-changing moment, a great life, a work of art, a face, a landscape, then the more deeply and directly the viewed object will speak to us–and the more we’ll learn about ourselves and our world.

Of course, in this hyperlinked, high-speed culture of ours, we are confronted daily by super-ephemeral stimuli. PhotoShopped images, flashing pop-ups, and pixilated text assault the eye and speed the rate of our looking till our most customary state is one of quick glances, passive reception, a kind of waking REM. The long-term effect of this is a cultural, personal, I daresay spiritual numbing and dumbing, what literary critic Sven Birkerts has forbiddingly dubbed,

… the leaching away of mass and consequence from our personal and historical experience.

But Ken Burns is right. Meaning accrues in duration. So he pins his camera to an image and leaves it there till the image starts to work on you at some powerful and mysterious level.

Likewise, after fifteen years of letting my eyes glaze over at the names “Lewis” and “Clark,” I’ve finally taken a good solid look and—what do you know?—have discovered that this tiresome old tale in fact speaks to me deeply.

Now, leafing through my condensed edition of the Lewis & Clark journals, I spot the singular weighty phrase in Clark’s entry of July 30, 1804, early in the journey:

Set out this morning early, proceeded on to a clear open prairie.

Turning through the pages, I find him using the same words on September 26th, 29th, 30th–and yet again on October 5th, 18th and 26th. I begin skimming at random, and there he is, still employing the phrase on July 19th of the following year, 1805, as the expedition nears the Great Falls on the Missouri River. And there again, on the 23rd and 25th of that month.

I skip ahead and catch up with the expedition in late 1805. They’ve reached the rapids of the Columbia River, less than a hundred miles from the Pacific coast. On November 10, 1805 Clark writes,

We loaded our canoes and proceeded on.

The more closely I read it, the more it means to me. I, too, am on a journey. I too proceed onward. And the longer I gaze at the visions along my way, the more meaning each moment of my journey shall accrue. I feel awake, alive, alert at every step—and every step teaches me something new.

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I find myself at a semi-nascent period of my career as an earning writer—that is, earnings are no longer merely nascent. Each year, just enough wages come through to contribute a decent supplementary income to my household. That is something to be extremely grateful for—and grateful I am, everyday.

But keeping even the little checks coming continues to be a struggle week by week. And an optimistic outlook, rugged perseverance, and a brave belief in the worth of the work at hand all become more important as time goes by. I just turned thirty, my first child will arrive in two months, and despite my many plans, ambitions, works-in-progress, and continuing commitment to my art, the future remains uncertain.

This is the story of many a working writer—and has been so for ages, as anyone can see by reading the correspondence or journals of any number of even our greatest authors. Henry James’ notebooks, which I’m reading at the moment, contain a fair share of biographical evidence to this point. In 1889 James anxiously writes:

I simply must try, and try seriously, to produce half a dozen—a dozen, five dozen—plays for the sake of my pocket, my material future. Of how little money the novel makes for me I needn’t discourse here.

(Perhaps a need to remind myself of this plight of penury—and affirm it as universal to most all writing lives—was in part what compelled me to publish a novel about the impoverished poet Rilke.)

Ultimately, most writers can only bend their heads, keep working, and strive to be their best. “Success” as the world knows it is wholly beyond our control, and anyway mostly irrelevant to the substance of our daily labors. “For us, there is only the trying,” said T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets.

But struggling as I am to keep the small checks coming, the mystery of success remains a natural subject for pondering, so I was primed recently to delight in the new book, Born Standing Up, by comedian Steve Martin. It’s an eloquent narrative of awkward beginnings, perseverance, and accidental fame.

Martin devotes his attention to the long struggles, the necessary obsession, the small and ill-paying—sometimes non-paying—triumphs that marked his journey to comedy dominance in the late 70s, and this sets his book apart from the standard celebrity memoir. There’s no gratuitous namedropping in Born Standing Up, not a bit of juicy insider gossip. Martin’s subject is his apprenticeship in—and his ultimate abandonment of—stand-up comedy. He begins:

I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.

 

This eighteen year period took him from youthful gigs at Kiwanis Clubs in his native Southern California, through employment at Disneyland during his teenage years and a repertory act at Knott’s Berry Farm during college, to eventual fame and fortune as a stand-up comedian who regularly sold-out giant stadiums.

Most fascinating about the book is Martin’s central confession: his complete lack of natural talent.

I had absolutely no gifts…Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.

 

That aphorism becomes Martin’s pervasive theme as he recounts his experience pursuing a lifelong passion—and finding himself subject to the incidental whims of fortune and success.

I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps. I was not naturally talented—I did not sing, dance, or act—though working around that minor detail made me inventive.

Martin has always had a serious streak. All comedians do, of course—their craft demands a rigorous personality infused with perfectionism (see the film Comedian, which follows Jerry Seinfeld through the grueling process of developing new stand-up material). But few comedians have incorporated their serious side into their public career as has Martin, who’s long expressed an interesting blend of zany and heartfelt. His play Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a perfect example of his rounded style, as are the films L.A. Story and Roxanne, both wonderful comedy/melodramas that originated as Martin authored screenplays.

Like his best movie moments, Martin’s book is a refreshing blend of the breezy and the thoughtful. His motive here is not to produce a work of chuckle-inducing comic writing (see his earlier book, Pure Drivel, for that). In Born Standing Up, Martin provides a longer-lasting service to his reader. The memoir engages, entertains, and instructs. It will resonate emotionally with anyone who longs to bring their passion and a pursuit of excellence to convergence in hopes of earning a living.

Martin has a knack for quotable insights. Born Standing Up is jeweled with them. He writes:

I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you’re about to do.

 

And later on:

Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

The book repeatedly affirms the worth of obscurity, naïveté, and these so-called “delusions.” And that’s a marvelously unique perspective to take as a basis for what, as we all know, becomes a tale of staggering worldly success.

What comes through in Martin’s story perhaps most palpably, most movingly, is the precious fleetingness of his apprenticeship period, before the arrival of mastery, before the glories of success or the rewards of fame, when the sole significant payoff of performing was the pure and resonant joy it brought. Here Born Standing Up, which at first appears to be a chronicle of a much-coveted pinnacle gained and abandoned, becomes an allegory of the importance of living life and cherishing one’s work each and every instant. Whatever our circumstances may be, however far from the ideal our careers may seem to run, there is always the work at hand to be nurtured with passion and delight. Recognizing and cherishing that reward—that we are doing exactly the thing we most wish to be doing, that we are learning daily—is the essential task of a fulfilled life.

In 1981, the year Steve Martin quit stand-up comedy forever, he was 36 years old, and he had become far more famous than he really wanted to be.

Though the audiences continued to grow, I experienced a concomitant depression caused by exhaustion, isolation, and creative ennui… This was, as the cliché goes, the loneliest period of my life.

I was caught and I could not quit, because this multizeroed income might last only a moment. I couldn’t imagine abandoning something I had worked so hard to craft. I knew about the flash in the pan, I had seen it happen to others, and I worried about it happening to me.

 

But it’s in freedom that the passing of time is sweetest—the freedom to learn, experiment, and make useful mistakes. And Martin had grown to understand that he was no longer free to do the thing he most wanted to do. He had striven to become a performer, but now he found himself merely rehashing prior achievements in hopes of staying rich. He was no longer growing, and the joy was disappearing.

Toward the close of Born Standing Up, he tells of an impulsive visit he paid to the Bird Cage Theater at Knott’s Berry Farm some twenty-odd years after his early employment there. The theater is no longer in use. Martin lets himself in and stands alone in the musty dimness. In this space, which is still unchanged, he had learned some of his most enduring lessons about performance. Daily, with a troupe of performers, he entertained small audiences, experimented, played around onstage, and now and then failed freely—with no ill consequences, but immense lessons learned.

Light filtered in from the canvas roof, giving the Bird Cage a dim, golden hue. There I was, standing in a memory frozen in amber, and I experienced an overwhelming rush of sadness… [I] looked out at the empty theater and was overcome by the feeling of today being pressed into yesterday. I didn’t realize how much this place had meant to me.

Driving home along the Santa Ana freeway, I was still unnerved. I asked myself what it was that had made this place capable of inducing in me such a powerful nostalgic shock. The answer floated clearly into my consciousness as though I had asked the question of a Magic-8 Ball: I wanted to be there again, if only for a day, indulging in high spirits and hi jinks, before I turned professional, before comedy became serious.

 

The journey itself, the learning itself, the apprenticeship, the obscurity and marvelous naïveté—the struggle itself—is the beautiful thing, a freedom to be cherished. Many long for such freedom from the heights of whatever professional pinnacles they have reached.

Here again is Henry James writing in that notebook:

To accept the circumstances, in their extreme humility, and do the best I can in them: this is the moral of my present situation. They are the reverse of ideal—but there is this great fact that for myself at least I may make them better. To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived—to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that—this doubtless is the right way to live.

See also: “Measures of Success,” and “Fulfillment: A Work in Progress”

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two years researching the extraordinary men who reunited feudal Japan after the century-long Age of Warring Clans. During this time I’ve become intrigued with Bushido, the chivalrous code of samurai conduct, and a doctrine whose lessons still resonate with surprising force. Though the samurai were expert fighters, the definitive Bushido treatise deals only briefly with warfare—but at length with the Eight Virtues of Rectitude, Courage, Benevolence, Politeness, Sincerity, Honor, Loyalty, and Self-Control.

Two things occurred to me: First, I’m as dismayed as anyone about our current American leadership. Second, in today’s world of “warring clans,” a strong dose of Bushido just might be of some help to our struggling president.

So, I tried to find someone who could shed light on both Bushido and whether George W. Bush can muster the virtues necessary to provide effective leadership in today’s turbulent times. I found an exceptionally qualified commentator: Professor Yoshi Tsurumi of Baruch College, who instructed Bush in an economic policy and international business course at Harvard Business School from the fall of 1973 through the spring of 1974.

At Harvard, Tsurumi taught that true leaders—both at home and abroad—must demonstrate honesty, compassion, moral courage, sincerity, and noblesse oblige: the belief that privilege entails responsibility. When we spoke, Tsurumi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was quick to emphasize that such leadership qualities, far from being the exclusive province of Bushido, are cornerstones of Judeo-Protestant thought, and underpin both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

How did the future President of the United States respond to these teachings about how leaders should behave? Here’s what Professor Tsurumi said:

George W. Bush showed disdain for such leadership qualities. He was disconnected from accepting moral and social responsibility for his actions.

According to Tsurumi, during class discussions, young Bush referred to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a ‘socialist’ and opposed Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, unemployment insurance and other New Deal innovations because he thought they were ‘bad for business’—though it was precisely those programs that bailed the U.S. out of the Great Depression, achieved victory in World War II, and produced the Golden Age of post-war economic growth. Hmm … so much for Rectitude and Benevolence.

At Harvard, Tsurumi came to know his students well. He remembered two types: “Those with strong social values, whom one feels honored to teach, and those like George W. Bush, who are the polar opposite. What I saw in my students many years ago reliably predicted how they behaved after graduating.”

Tsurumi said that in class, Bush uttered incoherent statements, avoided answering questions, and became petulant when addressing colleagues who questioned his opinions:

He willfully misrepresented reality to fit his prejudices and denied his own statements when challenged. He often indulged himself in delusions similar to current claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 tragedy. But his continuing ignorance of world affairs and lack of knowledge about the real threats to America’s security at home and abroad are far more dangerous today.

Well, then. I guess we can write off Politeness, Sincerity, Courage, and Self-Control.

Today, the president’s former teacher gives his former pupil a resounding “F” for post-graduation performance. Said Tsurumi:

Then, as now, George W. Bush refused to let inconvenient reality interfere with his self-righteous obsessions.

Let’s see: What’s left? Loyalty? At least America’s first “MBA president” has behaved consistently for the past 33 years.

And so ended my search for Bushido virtues, for noblesse oblige, in the world’s most powerful leader. Whither Rectitude, Courage, Benevolence, Politeness, Sincerity, Honor, Self-Control? My conclusion can only echo Processor Tsurumi’s:

George W. Bush was unfit to lead then, and he is unfit to lead today.

By the way, I don’t find this amusing. All great writings on leadership—and I’ve read a fair share—say essentially the same thing: When a leader has failed, only his replacement can restore an organization’s credibility.

So, for those who have the power to replace the leadership of our great nation, I offer a final Bushido precept, via Confucius: “Perceiving what is right, and doing it not, argues lack of courage.”

See also:

“(Bushido) Eight Difficult, Outdated Ways to Excel”

“Bushido: The Way of the Armchair Warrior”

Call us grandiose, but here at Soul Shelter we like to think we explore some of the essential issues of modern life, most namely the pressing challenge of getting a living while protecting the soul. That one’s no easy matter in this country of ours, perhaps because we’ve all been indoctrinated in the notion of “American Happiness.”

This notion has an inherent philosophical beauty, of course: the concept of equal opportunity; the self-evident truth of one’s right to seek one’s own particular destiny; the ideal of material bounty shared by all; freedom from authoritarian regimes, etc.

But as many of us experience on a day-to-day basis, American Happiness is peculiarly vulnerable to the distortions of capitalism, and can engender troubling lines of logic like the following:

1) ‘This country’s bountiful material rewards come of good ol’ American hard work, therefore… Since my material rewards haven’t yet materialized, it’s because I’m not working hard enough, therefore… If I work as hard as I can and still fail to reap those rewards, well, damn, it’s no one’s fault but my own; i.e. I am not pretty enough, not charming enough, not ambitious enough — or not ruthless enough; i.e. I’m a failure by nature and unfit for the American dream.’

2) ‘I’ve done plenty of good ol’ American hard work and I now have all the material rewards I ever wanted! — but I have yet to experience the warm glow of American Happiness, therefore… I’ve not gained enough to become happy, therefore… I need more, more, more and cannot rest till I get it!’

(Our nation’s greatest playwright, Arthur Miller, wrote a masterful play on this very subject almost sixty years ago.)

This month, we’ll celebrate the birthdays of two legendary American presidents (not to mention the votes we will cast in numerous states for tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primaries), so I thought it timely to offer discussion of this pervasive cultural idea.

The November 2007 issue of The Atlantic Monthly contained a compendium of mini-essays by America’s foremost intellectual, artistic, and political figures on the subject of “The American Idea.” One contribution, by Arianna Huffington, dealt with the American definition of happiness. It requires no commentary. Enjoy.

Pursuit of Happiness

Watching the news in our celebrity-choked culture, it’s easy to feel that the grand experiment envisioned by our Founding Alchemists — turning a fizzy mix of freedom and responsibility into societal gold — has spun wildly out of control. The promise of unlimited opportunity has given way to rampant narcissism and misplaced perfectionism (and the disappointed self-loathing that inevitably follows the search for a flawless self).

But isn’t this the logical result of the path the Framers set us on? After all, from the beginning, America has been dedicated to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” hasn’t it? So why not lust after fame and Botoxed beauty and hedge fund riches and size-0 jeans? Thomas Jefferson told us to, damn it! Only he didn’t. The signers of the Declaration of Independence assumed that some truths did not have to be proved — that some truths were, to borrow a phrase, self-evident. It was self-evident, for example, that the happiness to be pursued was not the blissed-out buzz induced by drugs or shopping sprees. It was the happiness of the Book of Proverbs: “Happy is he that has mercy on the poor.” It was the happiness that comes from feeling good by doing good.

Happiness today has been reduced to instant gratification. We search for “happy hours” that leave us stumbling through life; we devour “Happy Meals” that barely nourish the body; we believe the ads that tell us that there is a pill for every ill, and that happiness is just a tablet away.

But there is good news. All around the country, individuals are choosing to redefine the pursuit of happiness in ways much closer to the original American idea. More young people are volunteering than ever before, and more and more people, young and old, are including service to others in their busy lives. There are, of course, days when the travails of Britney, Lindsay, and Paris dominate the news, but the American idea, embedded deep in our cultural DNA, is inspiring us to pursue a much less shallow happiness.

See you on Thursday, when Tim will offer a second part to his discussion of Bushido, searching for chivalrous virtues here at home — in the figure of our current president.

See also:

“What We Really Need to Be Happy”

“Measures of Success”

More than a century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt raved about a new English-language work by a Japanese author, and bought five dozen copies of the book to distribute to family and friends.

The extraordinary text was entitled Bushido: The Soul of Japan. In this slim volume of less than 35,000 words, author Nitobe Inazo interprets Bushido, the samurai code of behavior, which explains how ethical people (samurai in particular) should act in personal and professional life. This was the first time that these millenniums-old, unspoken precepts of Japanese chivalry had been codified and published in a comprehensive work.

Bushido turned into the most important modern philosophical preachment ever published by a Japanese writer and became a global bestseller. It was translated into ten languages, and Nitobe went on to become the world’s most famous Japanese citizen of the early twentieth century. He later became an influential bureaucrat and an undersecretary of the League of Nations. His likeness was featured on the 5,000 yen note from 1984 through 2004.

Some scholars have criticized Nitobe’s work as romanticized yearning for a non-existent age of samurai chivalry. I believe Bushido contains extraordinary thousand-year-old precepts that did, in fact, originate in chivalrous behavior on the part of some—certainly not all—samurai. But more important, I believe Nitobe’s book captures the Japanese ethic of life—as the author himself put it, “an exposition of Japanese thought.” Ten years living in Japan convinced me that Bushido’s Eight Virtues are not only real practices, but a potent way to understand Japanese society. One thing is certain: None of Nitobe’s critics ever published an international bestseller translated into ten languages.

Here are brief overviews of Bushido’s Eight Virtues.

I. Rectitude or Justice
Here Nitobe refers to martial rectitude, but later and often he refers to personal rectitude: of behaving in accordance with an absolute moral standard, one transcending logic.

Rectitude or Justice, is the strongest virtue of Bushido. A well-known samurai defines it this way: ‘Rectitude is one’s power to decide upon a course of conduct in accordance with reason, without wavering; to die when to die is right, to strike when to strike is right.’ Another speaks of it in the following terms: ‘Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. Without bones the head cannot rest on top of the spine, nor hands move nor feet stand. So without Rectitude neither talent nor learning can make the human frame into a samurai.’

II. Courage
The influence of Confucius is conspicuous here and elsewhere throughout the text:

Courage is worthy of being counted among virtues only if it’s exercised in the cause of Righteousness and Rectitude. In his Analects, Confucius says: ‘Perceiving what is right and doing it not reveals a lack of Courage.’ In short, ‘Courage is doing what is right.’

III. Benevolence or Mercy
Again we see the strong influence of ancient Chinese philosophers (one wonders when China will again become as successful a wisdom-exporter as it was thousands of years ago):

Love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, are traits of Benevolence, the highest attribute of the human soul. Both Confucius and Mencius often said the highest requirement of a ruler of men is Benevolence.

IV. Politeness
Discerning the difference between obsequiousness and politeness can be difficult for the casual visitor to Japan:

Courtesy and good manners have been noticed by every foreign tourist as distinctive Japanese traits. But Politeness should be the expression of a benevolent regard for the feelings of others; it’s a poor virtue if it’s motivated only by a fear of offending good taste. In its highest form Politeness approaches love.

V. Honesty and Sincerity
True samurai, according to Nitobe, disdained money, believing that “men must grudge money, for riches hinder wisdom.” Thus children of high-ranking samurai were raised to believe that talking about money showed poor taste, and that ignorance of the value of different coins showed good breeding. He wrote that:

Bushido encouraged thrift, not for economical reasons so much as for the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to manhood, and severe simplicity was required of the warrior class. The samurai earned his income from land and could even indulge in amateur farming if he had a mind to; but the counting machine and abacus were abhorred. This social arrangement kept the distribution of wealth more equitable, preventing riches from accumulating solely in the hands of the powerful.

VI. Honor
Though Bushido deals with the profession of soldiering, Nitobe’s explication is equally concerned with personal, non-martial behavior:

The sense of Honor, a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, characterized the samurai. He was born and bred to value the duties and privileges of his profession. Fear of disgrace hung like a sword over the head of every samurai … To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as ‘short-tempered.’ As the popular adage put it: ‘True patience means bearing the unbearable.’ The great Ieyasu left to posterity a few maxims, among which are the following: ‘Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own shortcomings … Forbearance is the basis of length of days.’

VII. Loyalty
Among Japan’s salaried workers, the hard economic realities of the past two decades have dealt a body blow to corporate loyalty. Nevertheless, compared to the U.S.’s free-roaming, free agent business culture, loyalty remains important in Japanese society:

Loyalty to a superior was the most distinctive virtue of the feudal era. Personal fidelity exists among all sorts of men: a gang of pickpockets swears allegiance to its leader. But only in the code of chivalrous Honor does Loyalty assume paramount importance.

VIII. Character and Self-Control
What accounts for Japan’s prosperity as a nation? In my view, the virtues of Character and Self-Control explain much:

The first objective of samurai education was to build up Character. The subtler faculties of prudence, intelligence, and dialectics were less important. Intellectual superiority was esteemed, but a samurai was essentially a man of action.

So there you have them: Eight difficult, outdated ways to achieve excellence and success—from a foreign country, no less! (a future post will share thoughts on why I believe Japan is earth’s most prosperous nation).

I find Nitobe’s preachments inspiring, and wanted to share them with new generations of readers. So Mark and I decided to include an abridgment of the entire text of Bushido in The Prosperous Peasant.

To accomplish this, we trimmed the text to 5,000 words, modifying archaic punctuation and spelling in the process (Nitobe’s century-old language is dated and flowery, and he cites dozens of philosophers and writers unfamiliar to today’s readers).

If you prefer to read Bushido in the original text, you can download it free of charge at the Gutenberg Project and other locations.

By the way, full-color PDF posters of the Eight Virtues, designed by Keiko Onodera with the original kanji characters, can be downloaded from the “Gifts of Wisdom” section of The Prosperous Peasant Web site.

So enjoy! And please take refuge at Soul Shelter again on Monday, when Mark writes about American Prosperity.

You may also enjoy:

“Life Without Principle (or Interest)”

“Simplify, simplify!”

The latest Pulitzer Prize in fiction was awarded to Cormac McCarthy for his newest novel, The Road. This 75-year-old author is a fascinating example of one to whom worldly success and renown have come very late, yet whose career has been marked by consistent excellence, and–apparently–consistent personal fulfillment. Never once in the course of his life as an author has McCarthy sought public attention. The work itself–of writing and publishing–seems to have remained reward enough for him.

McCarthy has been publishing books since 1965 (The Road is his tenth). For nearly thirty years he labored in obscurity, publishing five magnificent novels, none of which sold more than 2,500 copies, though all were critically acclaimed, and one, Blood Meridian (1985), would eventually be named by Time Magazine in a list of the ‘Top 100 Books of All Time.’

It was McCarthy’s sixth book, All the Pretty Horses (1992), that finally brought him a deservedly wide audience (though still McCarthy avoided the limelight, remaining his quiet, hardworking self). Late last year, his ninth novel, No Country for Old Men, was brought to the screen by filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen. The film recently netted a heap of Oscar nominations.

A famously private person, McCarthy granted his first television interview last June to Oprah Winfrey, who had selected The Road for her TV book club. During the discussion, the author made a number of fascinating statements on the subjects of following one’s passion, pursuing excellence, avoiding employment, enduring poverty, living and working with dedication, and having the faith to let go of material concerns.

In my own experience as an author, I’ve never faced the kind of material squalor that McCarthy did in his earlier years (and I’m sure I wouldn’t want to), but though his lifestyle offers a rather extreme example of sacrifice, I find a great deal of wisdom in his words. As I see it, something beautiful comes through in his account of a life lived in total, humble dedication to his artistic pursuit–and the mysterious blessings that came of that dedication. Call it ‘the beauty of letting go.’

-McCarthy: …You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve … this interior image that is something that’s absolutely perfect, and that’s your signpost and your guide. You’ll never get there, but without it, you’ll never get anywhere …. You always have that hope that today I’m going to do something better than I’ve ever done [laughs] … How’s that for hubris?

-Oprah: …You were so poor at times, there was absolutely no money. And people would call and say, ‘Come and speak to us, we’ll pay you two thousand dollars’ or whatever, and you’d say, ‘No, everything I know is already on the page.’

-McCarthy: Well, I was busy. I had other things to do.

-Oprah: Are you just not interested in material [things]?

-McCarthy: I’m really not. I mean, it’s not that I don’t like things. Some things are really nice, but they certainly take a distant second place to being able to live your life and do what you want to do. And I always knew that I didn’t want to work.

-Oprah: How did you manage that? Most people want to know how to do that.

-McCarthy: Well, you have to be dedicated. But it was my Number One priority.

-Oprah: That you didn’t want to have a nine-to-five job?

-McCarthy: Yeah. I thought, ‘You’re just here once, life is brief, and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.’ And I don’t have any advice for anybody on how to go about that, except that if you’re really dedicated you can probably do it.

-Oprah: So you worked at not working.

-McCarthy: Absolutely. Yeah, it was the Number One priority.

-Oprah: Was it true you were so poor you got put out of a $40 a month hotel or someplace?

-McCarthy: I did.

-Oprah: [Laughs] That is poor.

-McCarthy: It was in New Orleans, it was a little room … I was very naive….

-Oprah: And wasn’t there another time that you were so poor you didn’t even have toothpaste?

-McCarthy: Yeah, I was living in a shack in Tennessee, and I ran out of toothpaste, and I went down to the mailbox one morning to see if there might be anything there, and in the mailbox there was a tube of toothpaste.

-Oprah: A free sample?

-McCarthy: Yeah, a free sample. But my life, you know, there’s hundreds of anecdotes like that. That’s the way my life has been. Just when things were really, really bleak, something would happen.

I love this notion. McCarthy’s personal story seems to suggest that once he’d devoted himself wholly to the enterprise of writing, and made the material sacrifices necessary to allow him to do excellent work, he created circumstances in which other concerns took care of themselves–not because he was favored by some quasi-supernatural agency, but because he stuck resolutely to his vision, and apparently did so even in bleak circumstances. This same idea is explored at length in our book The Prosperous Peasant, though we chose to phrase the principle this way: “Gratitude Attracts Luck.”

-Oprah: So money has never really interested you?

-McCarthy: No, not really. It’s just … I have friends that are wealthy and have spent their lives making money and they seem to be reasonably happy, but I suspect that they became rich because they were doing what they wanted to do. I think it’s hard to just set out in the world and say ‘I’m going to become rich.’ I think you have, as you said, a passion. And if you do it well then you get rich in spite of yourself.

On this subject of involuntary wealth, McCarthy speaks from first-hand experience. His magnificent work has brought him great material rewards (albeit only recently), which he never clamored for. In addition to the tremendous book sales generated by the Pulitzer and Oprah’s Book Club, last month McCarthy reportedly sold his literary papers to a Texas university for a sum of around $2 million.

-Oprah: … Was it a concern at all, not having money? You know, a lot of people … You’re a different kind of man, because a lot of people would be … would have a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety, would feel a lot of lack of self worth, because they couldn’t earn the money.

-McCarthy: … I was very naive. I always assumed that I would be taken care of in some way or other. And I was, I was always very lucky. Something always happened. Just when things were truly, truly bleak some totally unforeseen thing would occur.

-Oprah: Like …

-McCarthy: Like, I was living in Lexington, Kentucky once … A friend of mine had gotten me this job housesitting, so I had a place to live. But I didn’t have any money. I don’t mean that I didn’t have much money. I didn’t have any money. But there were still some groceries left in the house, so I ate those. And then one day someone knocked at the door, and I went to the door and there was a guy standing there and he said, ‘Are you Cormac McCarthy?’ And I thought, ‘I don’t think there are any warrants out for me.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘Sign this, please.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘I’m a courier.’ And he said thank you and got in his car and drove away, and I opened up the letter and there was a check in it for $20,000. … I was the first fellow of a new foundation that they had started, some people in Chattanooga, the Lyndhurst Foundation. They had some Coca-Cola money … and they were going to give these fellowships to people….

-Oprah: Wow.

-McCarthy: … And you got a [big] check every year for 3 or 4 years.

-Oprah: Do you think you were lucky? Or was there something else going on?

-McCarthy: I wouldn’t get superstitious, but you know, the laws of probability operate everywhere … You know, if you look at Barron’s and see these gurus that have done so well in the market … you’ll notice that next year it’ll be a different group of gurus. This should tell us something. … Some people, at some time in their life, are bound to be in one group [i.e. the lucky group] and not in another group [i.e. the unlucky group]. It’s simply the laws of probability. You don’t have to be superstitious about it. Anyway, it’s a long way of saying that I just think I’ve been very lucky. It could stop, certainly. I don’t think I’m blessed.

-Oprah: You don’t?

-McCarthy: Well, I am blessed because I’m one of the luckiest people I’ve ever known, so that’s certainly a blessing. But I’ve done nothing to be picked out for special … Quite the opposite. If there were justice in the world, they wouldn’t have picked me out to be particularly lucky, because I haven’t done anything to deserve it.

-Oprah: But you made a choice that you were not going to be working in your life. That you were going to do what you really loved.

-McCarthy: That’s right, and that obviously has some influence on it.

Indeed, it seems McCarthy attracted his own luck, through sacrifice, devotion to excellence, and enduring commitment. Most valuably, this enabled him to channel his energy entirely into his core passion of writing–and later earned him secondary material rewards.

To be sure, the circumstances of McCarthy’s life are extreme. Such circumstances, for instance, would likely prohibit a happy marriage and family life. But I believe the substance of his discussion here holds true. He had a vision, and then built a vocation of it by submitting himself to a path that he believed suited and sustained the vision, and now his work is destined to endure as some of the finest produced by an American author of his era.

This life path, like all, no doubt has had its share of complications, but within it there’s a main principle at work that is simple and universal: One’s pursuit of a vision demands the active qualities of dedication, sacrifice, bravery and hard work–but also a quality more mysterious, and more daunting: Faith.

In our upcoming Thursday post, Tim will explore some more formally postulated principles of excellence and success, as found in the age-old Code of Bushido.

With this post we inaugurate CommonSensical, a periodic feature here at Soul Shelter, in which we’ll offer commentary from thinkers and artists old and new on the timeless subject of balancing fortune and fulfillment, or maintaining a livelihood while having a life.

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned a guru of mine, Henry David Thoreau (see “Simplify, Simplify!”). Old Henry will inevitably pop up on this blog from time to time, for he had no shortage of things to say about earning a living in America, most particularly how to do so without allowing one’s soul to be crushed.

I recently revisited Thoreau’s “Life Without Principle.” It’s one of his most cogent, funny, tell-it-like-it-is pieces of writing. In fact, it’s impossible to read “Life Without Principle” today without noting its relevance to our office-bound, overworked, under-vacationed, gridlocked, media-saturated culture.

Thoreau talks about the importance of doing work one can be personally invested in (“getting a living by loving”). He encourages us to avoid the empty, draining pursuit of earning wages for wages’ sake. He talks about the fallacies of relying upon circumstantial “luck,” and the importance of locating the “gold” within the mine of one’s own talents. Ultimately, he urges us to make the most of every day we’re given.

Hard to believe Thoreau’s essay was published (posthumously) way back in 1863, but so it is. The industrial revolution had sent its waves through our national culture by then. Clearly its impact is with us still, felt on a daily basis in the workplace. Here follow extracts from “Life Without Principle,” with a few remarks sprinkled in.

Thoreau begins with a bang, tackling the problem of what we would call “the rat race” today:

Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work….

If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business….

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now….

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself…. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man…. The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work…. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Thoreau goes on to further address the value of working at something you love. He speaks from experience, for he solved the problem his own way early on. Because he loved being out in the fresh Concord air, he made a living of roaming the local countryside, working as a surveyor.

… Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery….

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living…. You must get your living by loving.

It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. …

We’re all familiar with the more modern refrain, “Love your job and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Our book, The Prosperous Peasant, explicitly explores this very subject through the parable of Jiro and Gonsuke, two peasants in sixteenth-century Japan who set out to change their destinies. All their lives they’ve known only servitude and monotony, but at the start of the book they undertake a quest to fulfill their personal dreams. Jiro implores his friend, “Why not admit your deep longing to become a merchant and act upon it? Why pretend we’re content to slave in the fields? If we fail to grasp our purpose today, where will we be ten or twenty years from now?”

Thoreau continues with an exploration of luck, and the fallacy (from both the moral and the financial standpoints) of relying on easy ventures and chance fortune.

The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. …Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted,—and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps of gold?

(Note: Though Thoreau invokes the religious tone here, it should not be mistaken for conventional piety. He was no churchgoer. His religious views were nonconformist and deeply subversive of the religious establishment.)

… The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer….

With that vision of the diggings still before me, I asked myself why I might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest particles,— why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine…. I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence….

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful. Is not our native soil auriferous? Does not a stream from the golden mountains flow through our native valley? and has not this for more than geologic ages been bringing down the shining particles and forming the nuggets for us? …

That’s my favorite part of the essay. We must ask ourselves: What riches (worldly or otherwise) do our own talents, passions, and interests already supply–or promise to supply–us and the world around us? How can we harness the inspiration to access that wealth (or continue accessing it) and possibly inspire others by doing so?

…A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the getting of his bread…

You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day…. It is for want of a man that there are so many men…

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality…We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities….

Today, it’s not hard to imagine Thoreau exhorting us to smash our televisions.

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant…What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?…

We are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

And on that salutary note, we’ll leave off with old Henry.

In preparing this post, I told Tim that I found the following observation by Thoreau particularly striking, and dismayingly true, even today:

Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.

Many of us notice this in our day: often it’s the sterile, soul-draining work that seems to bring the greatest material rewards, while more gratifying, fulfilling, or creative labor pays but pennies (not to mention socially important labor, such as teaching, nursing, etc).

So I asked Tim, “Why do you think the fun or important jobs pay so comparatively little, and the boring or less essential ones pay so much?” He had an interesting take on this subject, which he will offer here in his Thursday 1/24 post. See you then!

(In the meantime, visit the full text of “Life Without Principle” here).

See also: “Simplify, Simplify!”

My vocation entails years of labor often resulting in maddeningly unquantifiable results. Because this is so, it has revealed to me a few things about the elusive nature of fulfillment, both personal and professional.

Rewind to ten years ago, when I had the clearest epiphany of my life. I was nineteen years old and spending a college semester in London, and the bolt of lightning struck during a ride on the London Underground one afternoon. The girl I loved was sitting beside me (I’d followed her from California to England, where she was studying for a year). I leaned and whispered my secret: “I’m going to be a writer.”

Since earliest boyhood I’d enjoyed dreaming up stories, I’d kept journals and written poems for years, and knew I had a natural gift of kinds, so I nurtured a passionate desire to devote myself to the work of the pen. This vocation, of the many I could imagine, seemed to promise the greatest personal fulfillment. Immediately after returning home from London, in a craze of determination, I started working on a nonfiction manifesto. I knew virtually nothing of how to produce a compelling book, but believed passion and truthfulness, when bolstered by small native talent, would yield literary brilliance.

Perhaps it’s needless to say that my manifesto never saw the light of day. Another four solid years of hard work and perseverance were required before I managed to create literary material that merited publication—a short story. During that four-year period I wrote and scrapped a second full-length manuscript, but the short story was published in a national literary magazine. Two years after that (six years since returning home from London) my first novel appeared in hardcover on bookstore shelves across the country. My second novel was published only recently.

That beautiful girl from the London tube has now been my wife for eight years, and all this time she’s been an unflagging supporter of my by-no-means lucrative pursuit. We both believed, early on, in the true value of art: a humanistic, even spiritual value transcending money. We still do. This conviction has helped us avoid delusions of wealth. Despite today’s countless stories of break-out novels and meteoric best-seller successes, literary art is one of the roughest, most overgrown and ill-maintained highways to financial security.

My wife and I have always worked hard to simplify our lives (see my post, “Simplify, Simplify!“), to reduce our material necessities, and have made some very difficult sacrifices in order to continue doing work that fulfills us (for six nervous years we had no health insurance). For my wife these days, fulfillment means teaching high school English. For me, as ever, it means writing books. You can see we’re a far cry from model capitalists.

In spite of some great successes (my first novel was glowingly reviewed, nominated for a prestigious award, and even earned me royalties) living by writing continues to be a struggle, requiring—as ever—extreme determination and ceaseless hard work. And naturally, this artistic existence would be completely impossible without my wife’s moral and financial support (she’s the breadwinner in our house). No doubt this will be the case for some time, for even now I receive a few rejections per week.

What does it feel like to strive for such a personal vision, and how does fulfillment manifest itself?

Well, I’ve slowly come to understand that I’ll never attain my vision of “becoming” a writer, because every time I sit down at my desk I find myself beginning over again: reminded, by the hard work I do every day, that the feeling of being a Writer (with a capital “w”) will never arrive. I imagine this kind of thing is true for anyone who wishes to attain excellence in their work. Ultimately, attainment matters less than commitment. That, to me, is strangely comforting.

But when does fulfillment arrive if one is always at a beginning?

It’s all too easy, sometimes to convince myself that “fulfillment” and “financial security” are one in the same. In my worst moments I fall into fantasies of a golden prize that lies somewhere just ahead—a definitively measurable accomplishment that will eradicate all financial concerns and deliver a conclusive feeling of Success (with a capital “s”). Sometimes the fantasy is seeing my book title on the New York Times Bestseller list. Sometimes it’s having one of my novels adapted for a major motion picture.

But in my clearest, most truthful moments, I know fulfillment is to be found by recognizing something simpler and more profound. I guess you could put it this way: My destiny is already unfolding around me. What I want to happen is happening now. I’m a published novelist and am living my life as a writer. My continuing struggles—rather than undermining my achievements—are reminders that it’s all for real. I’m working, actively working, at the thing that fulfills me most. I was lucky, early on, to find some wise words in the Bhagavad Gita. They’ve helped to guide me for years now:

Be intent on action, not on the fruits of action. Avoid attraction to the fruits and attachment to inaction.

For me, that’s what fulfillment means: sitting down at the desk and working, every day.

See also: “A Moment of Fulfillment”