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Why be
Good?
When I read David Brooks’ column from the New York Times (“Rather than building
our careers, we should build inner character”) in my Friday, April 17, 2015 Life section of the Toronto Star, I heard my call to write a
spiritual musing, “Why be Good?” But for one reason or another, I put it off;
and then I picked up my Sunday,
May 3, 2015 Star, which also features The New York Times International Weekly and
Book Review inserts, and as the trickster spirit of coincidence
would have it, Brooks’ column in the New
York Times was titled “Goodness and Power,” and the Book Review insert featured a review of David Brooks’ new book The Road to Character; and, just to play
with my mind a little more, after reading my papers yesterday afternoon the
trickster spirit of coincidence nudged me to listen to the CBC Tapestry podcast instead of Writer’s & Company as intended, and Mary Hynes, the host of Tapestry, was interviewing David Brooks
on his book The Road to Character, so
here I am this morning contritely complying with my Muse to write my musing, “Why
be Good?”
In his
review of The Road to Character, Pico
Iyer writes: “Brooks begins with a sweeping overview of the non-intersecting
worlds of moral logic and economic logic, as he has it, dividing us into an
‘Adam 1,’ who seeks success in the world, and an ‘Adam 2,’ more deeply
committed to character and an inner life,” and he goes on, summarizing the theme
of Brooks’ book: “To nurture your Adam 1 career, it makes sense to cultivate
your strengths. To nurture your Adam 2 moral core, it is necessary to confront
your weaknesses.”
Brooks
confesses that he wrote his book The Road to
Character “to save my own soul,” and it was obvious from listening to him
on Tapestry that he had invested way too
much energy in his Adam 1 and not nearly enough energy in his Adam 2, and in his
fifty-first year of his life he was making an honest effort to cultivate a
better relationship with his Adam 2—his better self, if you will; and this
brings me to the theme of today’s spiritual musing, why be good?
This is a
big theme, and it would certainly seem presumptuous of me to offer an answer to
a question that has vexed some of the best minds in history, but in all
humility I bring a lifetime of gnostic wisdom to the table which gives me the
confidence to say that when all is said and done our essential purpose in life
is to simply be a good person.
This of
course presupposes a lifetime of questing for the meaning and purpose of life—a
personal library of thousands of books and years of commitment to various teachings;
so my spiritual musings are serious reflections upon the human condition.
But to
answer the question why be good? I
have to call upon my creative unconscious to give me the proper image, because
images are much more convincing than words will ever be; and in my mind’s eye I
see life as an elaborate maze and man scrambling from one lifetime to the next
to find his way out. And the man I see in the maze today is New York Times columnist David Brooks.
And
herein lies the mystery that David Brooks yields to with his book The Road to Character, because Adam 1
brought him success in life but Adam 2 will open the door of his prison and set
him free. “Many are called, but few are
chosen,” said Jesus; and David Brooks heard the call to save his soul by working
upon his character and moral center.
Everyone
will hear the call of Soul when life has made them ready, and David Brooks
heard the call when he began to notice
the distinction between Adam 1 and Adam 2 in some special people that he met
serendipitously in his daily travels through life, as he tells us in his New
York Times column:
“About
once a month, I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people
can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make
you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and
as they do so, their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with
gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They
are not thinking about themselves at all.
“When I
meet such a person it brightens my whole day. But I confess I often have a
sadder thought: It occurs to me that I’ve achieved a decent level of career
success, but I have not achieved that. I have not achieved that generosity of
spirit, or that depth of character.
“A few years ago, I realized that I wanted to
be a bit more like those people. I realized that if I wanted to do that, I was
going to have to work harder to save my own soul. I was going to have the sort
of moral adventure that produces that kind of goodness. I was going to have to
be better at balancing my life.”
I have
deliberately italicized the last paragraph, because when Soul calls the voice
is different; it comes from the depths of one’s own tired soul and speaks a truth that
makes one shiver. David Brooks shivered when he heard the call, and he wrote The Road to Character to find the way out
of his prison and bring balance to his Adam 1 and Adam 2, which speaks to the
Master Key of our prison door—the liberating power of Goodness.
Socrates, who made Goodness, the most noble of virtues, central to his
philosophy said that the unexamined life is not worth living; and although
that may be a bit harsh because every life serves its karmic purpose, David
Brooks examined his life and realized that to have the generosity of spirit and depth of character
that he needed to save his soul he’d have to have “moral adventures that produce that kind of
goodness,” and his moral adventures lay in confronting himself and shifting his
priorities from those that were self-serving (Adam 1), to those that were more
life-serving (Adam 2). In short, David Brooks had to be less selfish and more
giving, because the paradoxical dynamic of the Master Key to one’s prison door is
that the more you give of yourself the more of yourself you will have to give;
and, conversely, the less you give of yourself the less of yourself you will
have to give. That’s what Jesus meant when he said: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in
this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”
Why be
good, then? Simply, because there will come a time in one’s life, whether it be
in this lifetime or the next, when one will be called upon to open the door of their
personal prison; and like David Brooks, they’ll also see that the only way to open this
door is to simply be a good person.
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