"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not."
Measure for Measure, Act I, scene 1.
Let me quote from the New York Times columnist David Brooks who is quoting from someone else:
“I believe the really good people would be reasonably successful in any circumstance,” the detective writer Raymond Chandler wrote in his notebook in 1949. If Shakespeare came back today, “he would have refused to die in a corner.”
That's a striking image, and a fascinating perspective.
This week, I spoke to a great group of people one day for five hours. We were talking about business and personal success - in all its definitions and contours. Our topics included the two frameworks of ideas that I call "The 7 Cs of Success" and "The Four Foundations of Greatness." We laughed, we pondered, and a few times, I quoted long passages from Shakespeare to throw some unexpected light on a hidden facet of our subjects, and of our lives. And I do think that Raymond Chandler was right. Whenever he might have been born, in any alternative possible world, Shakespeare would most likely have made his mark.
At one point in the five hours of philosophizing, not counting the extra hour of pondering the mysteries of life at lunch over barbecue, baked beans, and cole slaw, I mentioned what I like to call my "3-D Conception of Success" - that, however different personal success may look for different people, it's always about three things:
1. Discovering your talents
2. Developing those talents
3. Deploying them into the world for the good of others as well as yourself.
Circumstances may facilitate this process, or inhibit it terribly. But really good people have a way of prevailing in almost any circumstances. What do we mean here by "really good"? Simply, the people who insist on doing the process of 3-D living well. Those who work at it, and keep at it, and pour their hearts into it.
But maybe, you might wonder, it's just the people like Shakespeare, the people who have that extra spark and talent and wisdom and even "genius," who will stand out, no matter what. Yeah, maybe. But maybe, also, more of us have that in us than we ever might imagine - our own versions, for sure, but a spark worth fanning into a flame that will provide its own light in the world.
How will you handle your circumstances now? To be or not to be: that is the question.
How we treat others is really, in the end, how we treat ourselves. Our outer conduct always has inner results.
In a great little passage from Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, the Prince addresses his colleague Polonius about some theatrical players who are visiting, and we get this exchange.
Hamlet: Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
Polonius: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
Hamlet: God's bodkin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.
Notice the evolution of the reasoning Hamlet uses with his friend. At first, he asks Polonius to "use" or treat the players well, and appeals to his self-interest in a fairly superficial way, pointing out that these are people whose job is, in part, to broadcast news and gossip far and wide, and that they'll certainly tell tales of Polonius, depending on how he treats them. If he treats them well, he will be well spoken of everywhere they go, and if the opposite, then his reputation will surely suffer. But Polonius objects, on what look at first to be moral grounds. He won't treat them well just because he'd benefit from that - he'll hold to higher ground and treat them the way they deserve to be treated. Duty, from this point of view, is always related to desert.
Hamlet feigns shock at that declaration, and jokingly points out that, on this principle, any of us would be lucky to escape a public whipping. He then suggests that the better course is not to treat others in accordance with their character or merits, but rather in accordance with our own honor and dignity.
The high path of moral action is to act well toward others because of who we are, not just in response to who they are.
Our actions should express our higher nature, and there are four distinct benefits from that.
First, by acting out of honor and dignity and treating others well, we set a high moral tone of kind action, rather than just responding to others in kind. We are moral leaders, rather than just reactive puppets who allow our own conduct to be dictated by others.
Second, by acting well, we reinforce our own ideals and higher tendencies. Whenever we act, we never just do, we always become. Third, kindness, generosity, and mercy do, in fact, more often than not, generate the good report of others, and this reputation indeed will serve us well in the hearts and minds of other good people.
And, fourth, we should be reminded of the words once spoken by Goethe, when he said:
Treat others as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they're capable of being.
By treating others well, we make gains, however small, in surrounding ourselves with the sort of people who are good company and good partners in making great things happen.
When we do well, things tend to go well in many ways.
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