Greatness, Danger, and Courage

Like most people, I knew of the author Antoine de Saint-Exupery because of his famous petite children’s book The Little Prince. I had to laugh today when I went back to re read this small prose poem many years after I first encountered it, and thought anew that it read like it had been written by someone under the influence of ample and exotic pharmaceuticals. But it’s sold over 140 million copies worldwide and is often described as one of the most beloved books of the twentieth century. It turns out that it isn’t the only book inspired by his years as a pilot flying from Europe to Africa and across other parts of the globe in the early days of manned flight.

I had never read any of Saint-Exupery’s other books until now. His memoir Wind, Sand, and Stars is stunningly exceptional. If you had asked me whether I might be interested in a book about early airline pilots delivering the mail and an occasional passenger between France and Northern Africa in the 1920s and 30s, I would have thought that to be a little far afield of my normal fascinations and concerns. But what a surprise! This is a book about adventure and life. It’s about fear and courage and commitment. It’s about focus and meaning and love. It’s about making our way through a world that’s often terribly harsh and then also lovely beyond words. It’s about our nature and our condition. As I read, it occurred to me that the book would be an ideal companion read to my own short novel, The Oasis Within, due to not only their shared stories about the Egyptian desert, but also their truly surprising overlap in deeper themes and insights.

Saint-Exupery sees all of us as something like the dispossessed members of a royal family, a royalty of the spirit that too many of us have left behind and sadly forgotten as we make our way in the world. He sees a spark of greatness in us that we need to fan into the flames that are meant for us, within our souls. You find this view intimated in several passages and informing many others. In one place, he’s reflecting on the life of a slave who has been kidnapped into service and is happily doing his job well. Saint-Exupery writes:

<<This man before me is not weighed down with chains. How little need he has of them! How faithful he is! How submissively he forswears the deposed king within him!>> (110)

In a later part of the book, we come across this statement:

<<If a particular religion, or culture, or scale of values, if one form of activity rather than another, brings self-fulfillment to a man, releases the prince asleep within him unknown to himself, then that scale of values, that culture, that form of activity, constitute his truth.>> (175)

We are all, in his view, royalty of the spirit. And we too easily lose our feel for this origin and destiny. One stormy morning early in the book, our guide is on his way early to an airfield for what’s to be his first piloted flight with the mail. He’s riding a bus with other men who are going off to their own apparently dreary office jobs in town. He listens in to what strikes him as their banal and mindless chit chat. In it, he catches a glimpse of the prison that is their daily lives and, musing on it, he directs his thoughts to one of the men, addressing him with sympathy and concern:

<<Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon a errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.>> (11)

In another passage on how most people seem to live, he exclaims:

<<How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played!>> (67)

We shrink our lives from what they could have been, from what they’re meant to be, into a small shadow of their potential. We play out our days in what we consider the safest place we can find to hide, and so we miss the greatness we could have inherited. He says:

<<With more or less awareness, all men feel the need to come alive.>> 219

Our poet pilot believes that our happiness will never be found in solitude, but in community, in friendships and partnerships together. Early on, he remarks:

<<Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in the warmth of human relations.>> (29)

Each of our lives is a part of a bigger picture. And it’s crucial for us to see that picture well.

<<It is only when we become conscious of our part in life, however modest, that we shall be happy. Only then will we be able to live in peace and die in peace, for only this lends meaning to life and to death.>> (222)

Some of Saint-Exupery’s deepest insights are to be found in his remarks on danger, fear, and courage. He first thinks of danger not as just a feature of flying in his time, be as a pervasive truth about the world and mentioning the desert bandits, or razzia, to be encountered in North Africa, he says:

<<We might believe ourselves secure; and yet, illness, accident, razzia—how many dangers were afoot! Man inhabits the earth, a target for secret marksmen.>> (92)

No matter what we confront in this life, our philosopher believes we can handle it. He even thinks that the extreme concepts of horror or terror never apply within the immediacy of experience, but only after the fact, and on the part of those who merely see or hear about the dangerous or harrowing incident that can be lived through with courage. He says, aphoristically:

<<Horror does not manifest itself in the world of reality.>> (49)

He always says:

<<Nothing is unbearable. Tomorrow, and the day after, I should learn that nothing was really unbearable.>> (147)

In fact, he views our hardships as providing a necessary condition for our deepest and highest growth. He writes:

<<But men are like this: slowly but surely, ordeal fortifies their virtues.>> (197)

He also believes that danger can bring us together in a distinctive way. He’s seen it and lived it. In fact, the deepest friendships evolve over time and endurance and memory:

<<Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.>> (27)

Saint-Exupery believes that we best make it through the hardest challenges and the worst situations by means of a focus that will not be shaken. One of his friends, a man named Guillaumet, had survived a harrowing ordeal and Saint-Exupery was subsequently offended that some journalists portrayed the man as if he were something like a careless insouciant rebel who merely laughed at danger. He saw his friend’s approach to the traumatic much more deeply. He says to us:

<<There exists a quality which is nameless. It may be gravity, but the word does not satisfy me, for the quality I have in mind can be accompanied by the most cheerful gaiety. It is the quality of the carpenter face to face with his block of wood. He handles it, he takes its measure. Far from treating it frivolously, he summons all his professional virtues to do it honor.>> (30)

This is the focus that allows us to move forward in the worst circumstances. He quotes his friend Guillaumet himself as having said, “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.” (38)

Saint-Exupery writes:

<<And I thought: If we were to talk to him about his courage, Guillaumet would shrug his shoulders. But it would be just as false to extol his modesty. His place is far beyond that mediocre virtue.

 If he shrugs his shoulders, it is because he is no fool. He knows that once men are caught up in an event they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

 Especially if it is scrutinized with Guillaumet’s lucid gravity. Guillaumet’s courage is in the main the product of his honesty. But even this is not his fundamental quality. His moral greatness consists in his sense of responsibility. He knew that he was responsible for himself, for the mails, for the fulfillment of the hopes of his comrades. He was holding in his hands their sorrow and their joy.>> (39)

In all things, we can grow through our ordeals shared with our fellows, through the bad times and the good. Finally our advisor says of another friend named Mermoz and the craft of flying, or any craft in our lives:

<<This, then, is the moral taught us by Mermoz and his kind. We understand better, because of him, that what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language. For there is one veritable problem—the problem of human relations.

<<We forget that there is no hope of joy except in human relations. If I summon up those memories that have left me an enduring savor, if I draw up the balance sheet of the hours in my life that have truly counted, surely I find only those that no wealth could have procured me. True riches cannot be bought. One cannot buy the friendship of a Mermoz, of a companion to whom one is bound forever by ordeals suffered in common. There is no buying the night flight with its hundred thousand stars, its serenity, its few hours of sovereignty. It is not money that can procure for us that new vision of the world won through hardship—those trees, flowers, women, those treasures made fresh by the dew and color of life which the dawn restores to us, this concert of little things that sustain us and constitute our compensation.>> (27-28)

But I quote too much. The book overflows with poetic insight into the deepest truths of our lives. I recommend it highly.

For the book, click HERE.

Fear. And Love.

What should we think about fear? Maybe Aristotle can guide us in the way he assessed the very different, but often related, emotion of anger. He believed the value of this powerful state of mind and heart could be revealed by such questions as: Toward what or whom? In what measure? For how long? And to what end? We should probably ask the same questions about any instance of fear. When there are real dangers, fear is rational. And it can be reasonable for us to allow it sometimes to call the shots, determining our thoughts and actions at a particular moment, or in a certain fraught situation, and thus guiding our behavior then and there. But this should not be a common occurrence. And there could be a better alternative.

A courageous person never lets fear unhinge him or her and always seeks to do the right thing, regardless of any dangers that might loom and threaten. Sometimes, that means listening to fear and accepting its guidance to pause, or stop, or retreat, or avoid. There are times when it's wise to be moved by fear. But in modern life, this emotion tends to intrude into our thoughts and feelings much more often than its help is needed. Practical wisdom, or prudence, demands that we respect a wide range of values in our actions, and those values encompass proper concerns for our own health and self preservation, as well as for those we love, and even to consider and protect a positive reputation among at least the wise in our communities. But fear is often a bully in its warnings that we may lose what we value, and is as subtle as any insidious force can be.

Fear has a thousand faces. It quite often presents itself as something other than what it is—as perhaps a common sense and reasonable desire for safety, or security, or comfort, or simply for what's known, as distinct from what might be clearly uncertain and unknown. It can make itself look like altruism, or moderation, or sheer rationality, and even when it's the polar opposite of these things.

I've let fear influence my choices far too often in life. But I never recognized it at the time. I was a master of self-deception. And, whether I know you well or not, I can imagine that you are, too. We all have this unfortunate skill. We can rationalize almost anything. And the smarter we are, the more convincing we can be, not only to others, but to ourselves. We allow fear to mask itself as a proper concern for another person, or as the voice of reason, when it's not that at all. And we need to learn the form of discernment, a component of wisdom that allows us to spot our emotions and motivations for what they are, rather than being moved around by what they appear to be. It's almost as if negative emotions can be illusionist shape-shifters and masters of disguise. Part of the Platonic program of stripping away illusions and getting beyond appearances means unmasking them and refusing them illegitimate power.

Fear can present itself as any reasonable person's primary concern. After all, what's more important than survival, it asks us. Well, perhaps a lot. I've come to see fear as being, at best, a rare and secondary motivator along the course of an imperfect life. Yes, it can be helpful. And for that we should thank it. By I now refuse to allow it to call the shots as often as it would like. I'll feel its cousin anxiety arise within me, but nowadays I'll spot it, and question its validity in the moment or the situation, and dismiss it from my heart and mind when it's counterproductive, or in other ways uncalled for. I hope you will, too.

Salespeople are trained in some organizations to act on the fact that most people are much more motivated by a fear of loss than by a desire of gain. And I have a corresponding suggestion: We should not be among those fearful people, and thus, by our own independence, diminish their numbers. No one has ever attained excellence or greatness by following a path of fear. No one ever made his or her best contribution to the world from a place of fear.

It's often been said: Two forces motivate us—love and fear. I recommend love. It's a vastly better guide, overall, than fear. It can give us the true safety that fear always pretends to care about, and yet without the illusions, constraints and deceptions of fear. Love, understood properly and done right, should be our prime mover and most consulted guide.

I think of love here in the deepest spiritual sense, and very differently from the popular understanding—not as an emotion at its core, but as a perspective and commitment to certain positive values, and to the good of all souls. Love is, on this perspective, the main application of wisdom, which is both love's fount and guide. If you value the right things, and embrace those values properly, if you have the right perspectives and insights, you don't need the goad of visceral emotions like fear or anger to motivate proper action. Love wins over all.

On this view, fear is merely a substitute motivator for those who have not fully developed love. And the tug of this pretender can misfire frequently and actually keep us away from the path of what we ought to do. Sometimes, the visceral electric shock of the snake at your feet or the sound in the night simply prevents the right exercise of the mind and the quick action you need. That's why the quintessential hero has a calm mind and a good heart. She does what needs to be done not from fear but love.

And in the end, I think that the deepest spiritual love is a mark of true courage. That's why we hesitate ever to attribute this virtue to suicide bombers or any terrorists, despite the actions that intentionally take them to danger and death. Their fanaticism may mimic courage and produce a counterfeit that's convincing in the minds of their fellow fanatics, but that's because they fail to understand the nature of genuine courage, by their blindness to true love. Any of us, in lesser ways, can make the same mistake. Love puts fear in its proper place. And as the Gospel says, perfect love casts out fear. When love is perfected, this alternative motivator is not needed in any way. It’s left behind. And this is a state of being for us all to hope for and to seek to attain.

The Purpose of Fear

One of the greatest pieces of advice ever given is this: Seek to live from love, not from fear. Over the long run, a few important things are true. Love expands us. Fear contracts us. A life mainly guided by fear is a small, shrunken substitute for what it could have been. 

But most of us can't completely avoid the experience of fear. And in this world, we probably shouldn't, anyway. So. In order to deal with it properly, we need to know its purpose. And here's a surprise.

The purpose of fear is to make us act. It's not to make us freeze.

Think about it: How many times do we ever find ourselves explaining someone's tremendous success in a challenging situation by saying, "She froze. That's why she prevailed."

The deer in the headlights doesn't escape danger by becoming motionless. The purpose of fear is to motivate action - often avoidance, sometimes preparation, always a new level of focused concentration. When we're trying something new where great gains or losses are at stake, fear will often arise. It's a certain form of emotional energy. The question then becomes: What do we do with it? Sometimes, it properly makes us stop and think and then proceed no farther. Often, it makes us stop and think and then proceed better. Courage can listen to fear but doesn't misunderstand it as nature's ultimate Stop Sign. Courage can be counseled by fear, but is never undermined by it.

When you next feel fear, let it make you act. Don't react in paralysis instead. Act. The right action may be a higher level of thinking, which, after all, is an action in its own right. Or what's called for could be a matter of physical movement. Fear isn't always our enemy, simply something to be overcome. It can be a stimulus to act properly, with consciousness, and focus. It can guide us to adapt, adjust, and act well.

It always signals the unknown. And the unknown is where the amazing can be found.

Just don't let fear stop you from acting at all. And remember, still, that the highest motivation is love. And perfect love, as we're told, casts out fear, even if it first feels it, and listens, and acts - it just never lets fear be the final word.

A Lesson From American Idol

The other night, I was watching the first round of American Idol auditions in Hollywood. Yeah, philosophers have to take some time off, too, like everybody else. And one thing was clear from the segment. No amount of talent will show through clearly if jangled nerves get in the way. People who had been great in local auditions were close to choking in Hollywood. They forgot the words, or wandered off pitch. Some looked horrified just to be on stage. And there they were, chasing their dream, with a real chance to see it come true - if they could perform at their best. And many couldn't. The judges actually pointed out the problem. Everyone was too much on edge. They needed to shed the dread and relax a bit.

And here's the irony. We get nervous because we care. But because we care, we have to release the anxiety and learn how to have fun doing the job.

Long ago, before walking onto a stage in front of a hundred or a thousand people, or often a great many more, I would feel my heart rate increase and I'd say to myself, "Oh. I'm getting nervous." Then, one day, I learned to say instead, "Ok. I'm getting ready." The first interpretation of what I was feeling always concerned me and made things worse. The new interpretation will always boost me and makes things better. 

So when you're about to do something you really care about, try what I do. Don't get nervous. Get ready.

Heavy and Hot Emotions

Why are there so many angry people in the world? At the gym the other day, some of us were talking about this. And I have a simple hypothesis. Anger is often an avoidance response.

Here's what I mean: Many people who express anger over little things, or even for no apparent reason at all, are subconsciously attempting to deflect an experience of certain other emotions that they will do almost anything to avoid.

This is the idea. There are certain heavy emotions like sadness, grief, disappointment, anxiety, discouragement, fear, and guilt. Such feelings can weigh on us. They can bring us down. We can be terribly oppressed by them. And when we acknowledge and express these emotions, that often just makes us feel worse. We wallow. We're stricken. We're crushed even lower.

And, on another side of the negativity spectrum, there are hot emotions like frustration, irritation, and - most of all - anger. When you express these emotions, it can be cathartic. You release the negative energy. You get it out. You stomp your foot, or throw a book, or punch a pillow. You curse. You send the power of the feelings through your voice or limbs and actively discharge it out into the world where you think it can't hurt you. Well, maybe you don't do this, but many people do.

You may know people who act like this all the time. In a situation where another person in their place would be feeling bad, or sad, or anxious, they instead turn the tables and attack someone who happens to be nearby, and often for transparently bogus reasons. But by doing this, they send any unpleasant inner energy they might be feeling out into the world for other people to deal with. They've transformed their guilt into offense, or their anxiety into rage. There's nothing wrong with them, they think. It's you, or the boss, or the neighbor, or the colleague, or the so-called friend who's just a jerk and the only source of any real problems in the situation.

It seems like many people won't allow themselves an authentic experience of the heavy emotions and, to avoid one or more of them, will deflect and externalize in these ways, instead. So, when you find yourself in the midst of an explosion of some hot emotion on the part of anyone close to you, and you can't figure out how it makes any sense in context, or in its degree or focus, consider that it may simply be avoidance behavior. It may be deflecting something deeper and too heavy to bear. And then, the only effective way to respond is to try to help your irate friend identify and deal with the real source of the problem, to the extent that he or she will let you. Otherwise, just let it go. It's not really about you, or the boss, or the neighbor, at all.

At least, that's my opinion as a simple philosopher utterly untrained in psychology, or psychiatry, or any of the disciplines that would actually cost you something to consult on such an issue. But then again, as they say, you get what you pay for. And if you disagree with me, just don't get hot about it. Ok?

Socrates and The Two Big Strengths

Socrates had two famous students: Plato, of course, but also Xenophon (pronounced as if started with a 'Z'). Plato was more theoretical and literary. Xenophon was more practical, and was actually a pretty amazing leader. In fact, the great management guru Peter Drucker once said that one of Xenophon's books, The Education of Cyrus, was the greatest book on leadership ever written. And having read it now three times, I think he was probably right. But I have a different concern today. And so, let me get to it.

Xenophon explained that what made Socrates such an impressive person was, first, his amazing degree of self-control. Xenophon actually thought of that quality as the basis for all the other many virtues, or strengths, that Socrates displayed. Then, he said, the second most important quality his teacher exhibited was consistency - that he was always thoroughly himself, genuinely and authentically.

Self-Control. Think about it for a second. It's the action or habit of resisting any pressures not to be or do what we know to be right. It's the quality we need to exercise in order to stay consistent with our beliefs, values, and sense of self. It's the ability to stand up to the pull of pleasure or the push of pain when either of these factors threatens to diminish our lives.

Pain and pleasure play big roles in our lives. Most people fight serious battles, accordingly, with fear and desire. Self-control is what it takes to win those battles. Some pains are properly to be feared and avoided. Some pleasures are rightly to be desired and sought. Self-control keeps us safely on our path, helping us to face what we should and reject what would be inconsistent to embrace. It prevents the damage that could happen if we were to act in improper and self-defeating ways, outside the borders of what's right for us, as the individuals we are.

I'm not sure that there is any such thing as perfect self-control in an imperfect world. But I've learned that the more of it we have, the better and stronger we are as we face the challenges and opportunities of life, and as we continue to create ourselves through our choices.

Plato's student Aristotle, who spent a lot of time analyzing human strengths, seemed to think that the chief virtue or strength we have is courage, without which none of the other virtues will ever be exercised in difficult circumstances. And how does courage function? It aids us in self-control, in doing what we know to be right, regardless of the difficulties and dangers that might face us. And that, in turn, yields consistency. But then, when you're a generally consistent person in your habits and history, that aids you greatly in exercising self-control. Again, perfection isn't the goal. But practice is the key.

So, according to Xenophon, the two chief qualities of Socrates, the basis building blocks of his greatness, were self-control and consistency. Properly understood, they can be such building blocks for us, as well.

Anger. Grrrrr.

How often do you feel angry? I hope it's a rare experience. Aristotle taught us that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this emotion. It can be rational and appropriate, but only with the right reason, toward the right object, in the right measure, and for the right amount of time. Anger toward an injustice can rouse us to work to stop it. It can light our fuse and get us moving. But if it continues to burn, then we're going to be the ones incinerated by it.

Frequent anger is corrosive to the soul. It's a poison. And we need to understand it better in order to avoid it more.

Anger often arises from fear or frustration. When you feel it welling up in you, you should ask, "What am I afraid of here?" Or "What's frustrating me right now, and what can I do about it?"

If something's bothering you that you can change, then action is better than anger. If it's something you truly can't do anything about, then acceptance beats anger any day.

The more often you feel this emotion, the more you should analyze your fears and frustrations. If you can deal with them properly, then this inner disruption will not bother you so much, but rather, literally, leave you in peace.

And, ultimately, it's only from a state of inner peace that we can best face new challenges and situations that would otherwise spark in us fear or frustration.

When we deal properly with the inner causes of anger, the results can be grrrrrrreat!

Fear and The Value That Overcomes It

A great profile of the novelist Marilynne Robinson in the New York Times a few days ago begins like this:

This June, as a grandfather clock rang the quarter-hour in her modest Iowa City living room, the American novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, a woman of 70 who speaks in sentences that accumulate into polished paragraphs, made a confession: “I hate to say it, but I think a default posture of human beings is fear.” Perched on the edge of a sofa, hands loosely clasped, Robinson leaned forward as if breaking bad news to a gentle heart. “What it comes down to — and I think this has become prominent in our culture recently — is that fear is an excuse: ‘I would like to have done something, but of course I couldn’t.’

Fear. It's amazing how often it holds us back, largely because we don't realize our own greatness, our deep resources, our resilience, and the magnificent purposes we can enact in this life. Marilynne Robinson is a believer in who we are, in our most fundamental souls. She's a religious novelist who has the rare, uncanny ability to depict goodness in compelling ways.

I wanted to bring this essay to your attention because I enjoyed it so much and I suspect you might, as well. In it, she says such things as:

“Being and human beings,” Robinson told me, “are invested with a degree of value that we can’t honor appropriately. An overabundance that is magical.”

It's good to be reminded of our astonishing core value, as human beings, in a world that often ignores it in so many ways, in favor of counterfeit values.

Robinson is a person who, learning her own value, and realizing the value that the rest of us embody, has not let any form of fear hold her back, but has launched out into a brave venture of writing that can show us, in subtle adumbrations, who we really are. And her honest boldness has garnered her both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Humanities Medal, in addition to many critical accolades.

Go check out her books here. I've started with Gilead.

I think you'd enjoy reading about her. It may spark a new sense of value in your life.

Today.