Dare Greatly

In a Cadillac advertisement on the back page of the new edition of Esquire, we find this:

It is not the critic who counts: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

It's an inspiring, shortened version of a famous statement by Theodore Roosevelt, worth representing in its entirety, because it's worthwhile to read and ponder the words again, and the additional thoughts and images that we all need to keep in view:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote vividly about a boxer who was bruised and bloodied in the ring, knocked down, but not knocked out, as being the only one who could bring to the next contest the deep confidence that never comes until you've had your teeth rattled and had the breath pounded out of you and outlasted the onslaught. The challenges, bumps, and bruises of life are to be used by us to strengthen our souls, and they alone prepare us for becoming and being the best we're capable of being. So, when they come, use them well, and proudly. 

In the end, it's not the critics, but the struggling creators, who prevail.

Excellence

Long ago and far away, wise people knew what we need to keep in mind.

I was cleaning up my office today and found a bunch of old 3x5 note cards from decades ago, dating from my time at Notre Dame. On one yellowed card was this, which I thought might be worth sharing:

"Badness you can get easily, in quantity - the road is smooth, and it lies close by. But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it, and rough at first. But when you come to the top, then it is easy, even though it is hard."

Hesiod. Around 700 BC.

The view from the top is amazing. But the air is so thin. And yet, the work of excellence is, at a point, easy as well as hard. It's just another of the wonderful paradoxes of life. You see as you climb.

Novel Insights: Part One - The Life of Pi

Yesterday, I posted a quote from the novel The Life of Pi. I was about ready to donate my copy to the local library when I noticed some annotations I had made throughout. Today and tomorrow, perhaps, I'll pass on a few more quotes from it, as I did yesterday, and add the brief morning reflections they've spurred.

Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.

Are you trying to get a new idea across to someone, or to encourage some new behavior? Repetition is key. Creative repetition is best. We most often need to be exposed to something repeatedly in order for it to really set in and take root. Even if you're trying to make a change in your own life, just in your own actions, repetitive reminders can work wonders. Then, the new action, or reaction, repeated enough times, becomes a habit or new dispositional tendency, a new part of your repertoire.

It was my luck to have a few good teachers in my youth, men and women who came into my dark head and lit a match.

What a great image that is. I had a professor like that in college. I had always been a good student, in the sense of knowing how to take a test or write an essay. But I never really awoke to the life of the mind and the excitement of great ideas until an amazing lecture class in college. That professor lit a match that became an eternal flame. I now try to do that for others, at least, now and then. We all should be arsonists of the mind!

Doubt is useful for a while. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a way of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Well said. Doubt is an often useful intellectual tool, but a terrible mindset to drag through life. When you have set a course in your work or life that honors who you are and what you believe, and you find yourself struggling a bit along the way, a good strategy is to: Doubt Your Doubts.

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.

In the realm of appearances, routine can seem most sane and reasonable. Departures from routine can seem inexplicable to others. But sometimes, doing something very different, even so different as to cause others worry, can be the adaptive path to flourishing.

Never be afraid to be thought strange.

I would be in the direst of dire straights, facing a bleak future, when some small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.

We notice so little that is around us and available to us. It's a side effect of our need to screen the mass of information crowding in on our senses at every moment. And, in the screening, we miss a lot. But when we get into a corner, into "dire straights," we often wake up with a new filter that lets through just what we need to notice, and something that has been close to hand all along will take on a new luster and appear as just what we need. The more we learn to wake up and pay attention at times of need far less than dire, the more often this will happen without requiring such serious difficulty to spur us on. And there's nothing like a clear and passionately held new goal to readjust the filter and help with just the inventions we need.

Some more thoughts tomorrow!

Seneca on Difficulties and Confidence

Difficulties and confidence: On a superficial consideration, they might seem to be inversely related - the more you have of one, the less you'll have of the other. But allow me to quote one of my favorite philosophers, the prominent first century Roman lawyer, and advisor to very successful people, Seneca. These are his thoughts, in my own translation from The Stoic Art of Living:

"The powers we have can never inspire in us a genuine inner self-confidence until we have confronted many difficulties along the way, and even now and then have had to struggle fiercely with them. This is the only way our true spirit can ever really be tested - the inner spirit we have that will never consent to be ruled by outer forces. The nature of such a spirit can be seen in the fact that no prizefighter can go into a contest with high spirits if he has never been beaten black and blue. The only man who can enter the ring with confidence is one who has seen his own blood, had felt his teeth rattled by an opponent's fist, has been tripped up and has experienced the full force of an adversary's charge, who has been knocked down in body, but not in spirit - one who, as often as he falls, gets up again with greater determination than ever." (Epistulae Morales, I.75)

In another place, Seneca goes so far as to say:

"Disaster is virtue's opportunity."

Disaster. Catastrophe. Failure. Disappointment. It's all about how we react to difficulties. Do they weaken us and take us down, or strengthen us and build us up? To an amazing extent, and within an extraordinarily wide range of circumstances, that's largely up to us. And in responding well to the trouble we face in our own lives, we can be an example to others of what it's like to be knocked down, but not knocked out.