Tag: Arthur C. Brooks

T.G.I.F.: Sanding down the edges

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I like to use Hegel’s ideas in the form of a simple set of questions to help temper my nature. Perhaps this checklist can be useful to you as well.

1. Where can I find happiness in the ordinary, unremarkable points in my life? What gifts am I overlooking because they are not bright and shiny, although they are beautiful in their smallness? Perhaps this is a peaceful evening at home, a quiet walk before dawn, or a little contemplation over a delicious cup of coffee.

2. Am I looking for a lift in my mood today from my personal ambitions and primal drives? This is Mother Nature with her false promise that satisfying this or that urge will give me the satisfaction I seek. Instead, what individual desire can I shed today?

3. Am I asserting my views in a way that ignores others or is disrespectful to their dignity? Am I attached to my opinions as if they were precious jewels? How can I let go of my own rightness today and listen with love more to others?

4. How might I balance my own needs and desires with those of my family and community today? How can I be a better spouse, a better parent, a better colleague and friend, and a better citizen?If you’re anything like me, there’s little danger that the fire of your individualistic nature will be extinguished by this interrogation.

Instead, it should just sand down your edges a bit, make you more cognizant of your strong self-focus. With that awareness to keep you in check, you might just find yourself happier as a result.

— Arthur C. Brooks, from “Hegel’s Rules for a Happier Life” (The Atlantic, March 6, 2025)

a great secret to happiness

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To start today on a path toward enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, consider the possibility that you don’t need to learn anything new. Instead, you may want to unlearn some false lessons that have pervaded the culture over the past few years. The first untruth is that you must know your destination; the second is that a good life is one that minimizes suffering; and the third is that you must know and live your own truth. The Dominican sages and the modern scientists together show that these are all fake news and serious impediments to a happy life.

In their place, I suggest that you start your path of life by repeating each morning these three affirmations:

  1. I do not know what this day will bring, but I will live it the best I can, with an attitude of love and generosity.
  2. I am grateful for the good I experience today, but I do not fear the bad, which is part of being alive and an opportunity for learning and growth.
  3. I do not possess the absolute truth, but today I will seek it with honesty, an open heart, and a spirit of adventure.

…You will notice that all of the modern untruths I’ve identified have one big thing in common: They say you should focus on yourself—your future, your career, your discomfort, your truth. All moral teaching aside, how boring is that? I can think of no better way to miss the awesome majesty of life than to focus egotistically on a psychodrama in which you are the star.

Happy people can zoom out to see and fully enjoy the world around them. But that means standing up to the lie that you are the center of things. That is the essence of humility and a great secret to happiness. We could add one more affirmation to complete the list above: I will focus today on the miraculous world outside myself.

— Arthur C. Brooks, from “Some Dominican Wisdom We Can All Use” (The Atlantic, May 23, 2024). Adapted from the commencement speech delivered on May 19, 2024, at Providence College, a Catholic institution founded by Dominican friars.

Tuesday Morning Wake-Up Call (“Getting inside the machine”)

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Almost nothing is worse, then, than realizing that your life itself has become boring. Perhaps you have at one time or another concluded that your work is drudgery, your hobbies humdrum; that even your relationships are superficial and unsatisfying. Each day reminds you of the one before. What is there to do?

One obvious answer is to run away, to throw out the old routines and connections, and find new ones instead. But maybe the solution to boredom is the exact opposite: not to seek a new life, but to go deeper into the one you have. This is exactly what the Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard advocated. When life becomes tedious to you, he argued, you don’t need to look outside for something to shake up your malaise. You need instead to look inward and find what’s missing within your own heart and soul…

According to Kierkegaard, when we first find life boring, we seek new delights…This is the time, usually in early adulthood, when people are most open to new experiences and opportunities. For some…“the aesthetic” might encompass a more innocent sort of experience—a hobby such as travel, say.

This is fine for a while. For many, though, this consumerist approach to living eventually comes to seem trivial—and, ultimately, boring. “Is this all there is?” you ask yourself. At this transition to the next stage, you need to shift from treating life as an act of consumption to becoming part of a process that creates deeper experiences. You need to “get inside the machine.” …

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Lightly Child, Lightly

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In the midst of financial news that seems to get grimmer by the day, one story of a man trying to escape caught my eye. Andrew Formica, the 51-year-old CEO of a $68 billion investment firm, abruptly quit his job. He did not have another job waiting—or anything else, it seems. When pressed about his plans, he said, “I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing.”

Easy, right? Not for a lot of us, it isn’t. Besides the fact that you need to have a good deal of financial security to quit working, “it is awfully hard work doing nothing,” as Algernon said in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I can relate to this. I work long hours and have sometimes planned to go away and do nothing just for a week or two. But when I try, I find I am utterly incompetent: Idle chitchat drives me crazy; I get the jimmy legs 30 minutes into a movie; sitting on a beach is a form of torture. Whenever I make an effort to rest, my mind always wanders back to the work I am fleeing.

As difficult as it may be, Formica has the right idea. For the sake of happiness, strivers and hard-driving work machines of any income level need to learn to stop. If you are in this category, nothing should be high on your to-do list

…

Choose soft fascination.

During your unstructured vacation, choose activities that can gently hold your attention while also leaving you plenty of bandwidth to mentally meander. This is what three University of Michigan psychologists call “soft fascination,” and you might find it by walking in nature, or watching the waves. In contrast, “hard fascination” (found by, say, watching television) occupies attention and rules out mind-wandering. Research has found that soft fascination is more restorative than hard fascination. For example, in a 2018 study, survey respondents said that walking in nature was 15 percent more effective at helping them “get away from it all” than watching television…

If scheduling leisure seems unnatural to you, consider the way good health requires you to schedule your meals and exercise at more or less a certain time each day for a particular amount of time. Schedule “white space” in your day, and keep it off-limits from the tyrannical urgencies of your work (as well as from eating and exercise). If your guilt creeps in, or if you’re worried that “wasting” this time will somehow make you poorer, try to remember the words of the Welsh poet William Henry Davies: “A poor life this if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare.”

— Arthur C. Brooks, from “How to Embrace Doing Nothing” (The Atlantic, August 4, 2022)

Notes:

  • Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:51 a.m. May 8, 2022. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
  • Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Neeson. Revenge. Being more virtuous.

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movie,gun,pointed gun

This has been clanking around upstairs for weeks. “Taken” is a story of an ex-CIA agent whose daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian gang engaged in human trafficking. They drug, prostitute and auction off young women. I dismiss the probabilities of the predicable storyline. I cheer him on through the mayhem and destruction right to the Disney finish. His daughter is saved!

I watched the movie in the attic. A dark room dripping with evil. I finished watching the movie and headed outside, I needed to get to the Sun.

I have a daughter.
It’s just a movie.
This evil actually exists.
It’s just entertainment.
Getting the bad guys felt so good.
Then why do you feel so dark now?
And why do you watch these things?

I came across this op-ed essay by Arthur C. Brooks titled The Trick to Being More Virtuous and asked myself:

  1. Demand outstrips supply for this “poison.” Am I further poisoning the well with my spend and my attention?
  2. What does my next “click” say about my desires?
  3. Will the next movie or book or article that I read, “elevate” me?
  4. Like that third donut, can I pass it by and “seek personal moral improvement?”

Here’s a few excerpts from Brooks’ essay:

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