The Courage to Be

Wade Kenny  //  April 30, 2012

Henry Miller writes on the first page of one of his “Tropics” books, “I have no money, no resources, no hopes – I am the happiest man alive.”  What can this possibly mean, and what does it have to do with a professional studies degree?

A professional degree suggests, more than other degrees, an intention to do a certain kind of work.  However, the type of work that is done after a professional degree is quite varied.  With an MD, for example, you can be a heart surgeon or a diet guru. There’s a flexibility in the field, and this is also true for people in communication studies.  So there are a lot of choices ahead; and they are closely associated with who you are becoming.  I hope you will think about these choices carefully, because choosing the specific work that you will do plays an intimate role in choosing the kind of person you will be.

In order to make that sort of choice, however, courage is required – courage, because vulnerability, a sense of fear that you can be hurt or suffer loss, can overwhelm your ability to make the choices that are closest to your heart.  And be assured, we teach vulnerability in our society, so you are probably suffering from an excessive dose of it.  One form of vulnerability is fear of losing.  In basketball, those who fear losing always pass, in softball, they bunt, in love, they choose the “safe” romantic partner, and in work, they take the safe job. We can also be vulnerable to how people think of us – we can feel that we have to prevent being embarrassed or shamed in public or appearing to have less status than someone else.

Shame vulnerability leads us to join high-status groups, to seek high-status jobs, to buy high-status clothes and cars, and to date the superstars. But here’s the thing: You’re going to lose, and you’re going to suffer shame no matter what you choose – that’s just life; and our culture has long-understood that.  In fact, we can see this basic principle in the marriage vows: “better/worse; richer/poorer; sickness/ health”.  It’s not either/or; you don’t get to pick your favorite three — you just get to choose who-you-will-be-with when they happen.  Same thing with career choices – all six are coming, your only choice is who you will be when you are experiencing them.  This is the theme behind Alan Watt’s little book The Wisdom of Insecurity, and I can compress it into two sentences:  Stop acting as if it’s your choices that will bring your world to an end because it’s going to end no matter what you choose.  But what do you plan on doing in the meantime?  That’s his message.

Now, a sidebar.  The fact that you take a secure job does not mean you suffer from “loss vulnerability.” The question is only this: to what extent does your fear of loss, failure, embarrassment, and so forth, drive you into second and third choices, rather than keep you pushing for your first choice?  It’s okay to negotiate with security – that’s why I became a professor: I decided it was the best way to live as a reader and a thinker with a secure income.  And, essentially, it was a good choice; I am quite happy with the role it has played in making me who I am and who I am becoming.  It seems to be getting better all the time.

Neither does working for Cosmopolitan magazine mean that you suffer from “status vulnerability” – in other words, that you are compensating for an inferiority complex.  Maybe you really are in love with the quarter back, and somebody has to marry him – otherwise, what happens to football? The point is only this: that you ask yourself whether you are choosing for yourself, or choosing to create the “right” impression for others.  And it matters, because ultimately, you are the one who has to live inside that head. And if you sell out, a little voice inside will punish you for doing so every day of your life.  And if it ever stops punishing you, well then you are in real trouble – then you are lost.

The metaphysics of the “inner voice” is really problematic and we can’t go into it here.  But let’s use the expression loosely, so that we can say anything at all.  Let’s just ask ourselves if we can admit to having an inner voice of some sort, just long enough to read this article.  How do you find out? Well, just think of a time that you regretted having done something.  You tried to forget about it, but it came back to haunt you. Well, the “inner voice” is that part of you that does that very thing. So get acquainted with it because it is a demanding little fellow who can, by times, help you out of a jam.  It can do a lot of other stuff too, like give you ulcers, if you don’t listen to it.  So give it your respect.

Okay, so if you don’t think you have an inner voice, you can stop reading now. But if you’re at least going to pretend that you have one, then let’s go forward.  This inner voice, which the scholastics referred to as synderesis, exerts a compelling effect on your decision- making. You want to tell your boyfriend the truth, but you’re afraid. You want to tell someone what you really think of them, but you’re afraid. You want to take a different job, or quit your job, but you’re afraid. Maybe, for example, you want to visit Africa but you’re afraid. There are a lot of things that you might want to do, only you are afraid to do them. Equally, you might not think they’re practical. You might also think that you will never reach the status you want in life if you do them. In all these cases, your vulnerability, your sense that you could bring damage to yourself or reduce the total possibilities for complete success, is playing a role in how you make choices.

In some ways, this is a good thing, it keeps you from trying to jump out of a tree and fly. But there is a balance point, the point when you have to decide whether or not your sense of vulnerability is protecting you or whether it’s crushing you. Because, believe me, your “inner self” will not just shut up and leave you alone if you let your fears rule you. Over a lifetime, it will haunt you with misery.  Truth: I know people who have coddled and nurtured their vulnerability all their lives; and, by my observation, the older they get, the harder it is for them to get out of the habit. Some of these people will admit, straight out, that they have ruined their lives by making choices based upon their fears or their quest for status.

For guys, the operative movie is “The Devil’s Advocate” – for gals it’s “The Devil Wears Prada”;  and it’s worth noting that both of these movies refer to the devil in their titles, because hell is something you have an opportunity to fashion and live in in your own lifetime. You build it from the bricks of bad choices that you hold together with the mortar of your fear.

In class we use our own word, and it is our word – dysdaimon.  No one else has that word, it’s ours. And that’s appropriate, because we share a secret and a commitment: we know that life, the life we are about to lead, can be hideously ruined, and we have a commitment NOT to do that with our own. So you’re thinking, how can it still be a secret if I’ve written it here?

The answer is simple: it is hiding in plain sight. Even when I stay silent about it, it still announces itself.  All you have to do to see it is walk outside and look at the sky right now. It is blue, all the way to heaven.  And if you stare at it with a wish for your own life, then you will see an angel falling down through that blue sky into your own heart right now.  That angel has been falling into you since you were born, by the way – it carries the love inside you called “self-love” that wants only the best for you.  Of course, I can’t say that to anybody else.  People would just think that I’m some kind of nut.  And that’s exactly what William Blake noticed when he said he could see a choir of heavenly angels as the sun, rather than a little golden orb. Blake understood that with his imagination he could create what I now refer to as “the Rainbow Brite party in my head.”

You can have a party too. It’s possible.  You life can be your joy, and your work can be a part of that.  It’s possible; but it doesn’t occur without hard work, without sacrifice, without a sense of direction, and without occasional loss. It also requires luck. Bad things could wreck it all tomorrow. Hey, I would not have built the world this way, and I don’t have the blueprints.  I’m just guessing, like you, based on the things I read and what I notice going on around me.  This is what I believe.  The thinking now passes over to you.  So does the responsibility.  Your heart is under your own care.  This is just a perspective on how to do that.  Best I can offer – I hope it helps.

Like me, you’ll probably end up making life choices that aren’t the best, given the circumstances.  Perhaps it would be silly for you to choose to be an Olympian or a movie star.  Those are unlikely paths in life.  So, apply a little bit of common sense – that isn’t a bad thing; in fact, Herb Simon won a Nobel Prize for modeling that kind of decision making – he called it “satisfycing”.  Of course, your reach should be consonant with your grasp.  Me, I will never be a great pianist.  That’s too bad. On the other hand, I can write stories, I love to write them, and wouldn’t it be a sin if I didn’t because it isn’t “practical”.

So I really wish you that sort of luck, because you deserve it. Based on my experiences with students, based on the goodness that you have shown me, on your ability to also think of me, I have forged one of the most meaningful bonds in my life. My life moves in two directions: it moves in the direction of the goals that I have in order to be what I want to be, and it moves in the direction of those to whom I am spiritually bound. And somehow or other, these two goals have fused into a single experience for me because of who you are and what you have shared with me of your lives. And so I hope that this life which I experience as a gift, although it is one that I have labored toward my entire life, I also hope that you will experience the same thing.  Think of your life like getting a guitar for Christmas.  Yes, it’s a real beauty, but it’s pretty stupid if you don’t learn how to play it.

When you choose the career that you will take, or any other major moral choice you’ll make, choose it carefully and with courage. Because when you choose it, you will, at the same time, be choosing yourself.