What will your verse be?

On the recommendation of my roommate I just watched Dead Poets Society.  Great movie, LtP strongly suggests that everybody watches it at some point in the next few hours.

I'm a sucker for movies about nonconformity, especially for ones with Robin Williams, so this hit home pretty good.  Definitely a good use of two hours.

Robin Williams is an English teacher in Dead Poets Society.  His main message for his students is be their own people, to not do things simply to do things.  That everything should have a personal motivation behind it and should be a point of personal pride when it's done.

There's a big difference between personal pride and being recognized for accomplishing something.  Last week I talked about "Scott," who basically based all decisions off of what would make him look the best.  Sure this is cool.  Everybody wants to be seen as successful.  There are very few people who honestly don't care at all what other people think and do 100% what they want, and those people are psychopathic serial killers.

And have seriously creepy eyes

Personal pride comes from doing something that we want to do, that we're intrinsically motivated to do.  That's why there's so much satisfaction.  Where does satisfaction come from if we're looking to get externally rewarded?  Would someone be happy with the fact that they plugged themselves into the system and then got spit out?  All you have to do is not be very daring and not screw anything up. 

I'm not impressed. 

Anyway, I believe that to gain that personal pride we have to be willing to make decisions that are, well, personal.  We have to be ourselves and see if people adjust instead of adjusting to what we think other people want us to be, to be a Howard Roark instead of a Peter Keating, if you will.

In the post about Scott I talked about how I knew one person that liked him.  That one person is going to be referred to as Rachel. 

I used to be a huge fan of Rachel.  Very nice, seemed caring, etc.  No reason not to like her.  Until I found out the reasons not to like her, namely that she has none of her own values or beliefs.  She's all about making other people like her.  It's like her life is one big Miss America interview session - don't be too extreme in either direction, don't take a firm stand, basically just try to stand there and not give people a reason not to like you.

This really works, until, well, it stops.  People start figuring out what you really stand for eventually, and if they can't figure it out it starts looking suspicious, especially when it's more "empty" than "mysterious and dreamy."  I've honestly known Rachel for over 18 months, and I can't tell you what she finds important.  She's the most wishy-washy person I have ever met.  She makes decisions solely so that other people like her, especially people who can give her something (see Scott).

This creates a strange paradox.  The more she does to get other people to like her, the fewer people like her.  I've talked to a few other people who have known her about as long as I have, and we're all going through the same thing.  We used to like her but now there's just no reason to.

I don't dislike Rachel, but I don't like her either.  I honestly don't care at all.  Is there anything worse?  I would rather have somebody have some sort of opinion on me, either positive or negative, than just honestly not care about me at all.  I have lost respect for Rachel to the point where I try to say things to her just to throw her off and see how she'll react.  Almost every time she gets pissed at me, but because she wants people to like her so badly she always turns around and isn't pissed within a few hours or in the worst case the next day.

Why?

In one of the first scenes of Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams' character says, "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."

Basically we can do anything we want.  We can live our lives as if life is a science, or we can live them as if it's a poem.  This doesn't mean that medicine, law, business, and engineering can't be approached poetically.  Albert Einstein wasn't a poet but he lived poetically.  Sir Richard Branson lives poetically.  We only have a few years to be.  To be alive, to be in this world.  Being is a gift.  Is it really worth sacrificing the first 60 years of life working as part of the machine so that we can enjoy the last 20 years of retirement when we could simply see the entire life as an opportunity.

Life is not a rare opportunity, it's not a unique opportunity, but it is a special opportunity, and we need to look at it that way.  At the end of the above quote, Williams' character asks his class, "What will your verse be?"


That's a pretty powerful way to look at life, but it's very true.  Very few people are not remembered for something by somebody, so we need to think about what our verse is going to be.  Scott's verse will probably have completely proper rhythm and structure, but will it mean anything?  Rachel's verse will be cute and everybody will probably like it at first, but will we find any depth in it?


Our lives, our being, should be something that we're proud of, something that we can look back at and say, "Yeah, that's what I wanted to do, even if it's not what other people valued." 


Our lives need to be lived consciously.  If we don't know who we are, how will anybody else have even a chance of figuring out who we are?  Our verse is the only thing that lives on about us.  Our verse is our legacy.  What will yours be?

Life

Life is like driving down the highway on a summer night at sunset: you can view it a bunch of different ways.  There are people who are bored out of their minds and sleep through it.  There are people who role up the windows and turn the music up and just focus on the road and the destination.  There are the people who complain about how tired they are and how much their butt hurts and how they're sick of driving

There are the people that look forward to the journey but love the trip just as much.  They roll down the windows and feel the wind blowing in their face and look around and see all the beauty in the world, even if it doesn't seem present at first.  The beautiful way that the sun goes down over the corn fields.  The beautiful way that the sun peeks around the clouds.  The way that the clouds look like they're painted onto the sky.  The way that the wind hits them in the face, and sometimes it makes them tear up, but it's worth it because it makes you feel so alive.  The way that in a world full of so much hustle and bustle and business, you can be perfectly alone.  Everything is driven by your own motivation.  Everything is your own choice.  You thrive through the sun in your eyes and the crappy roads.  You smile and shake it off and have been able to experience the most beautiful things in the world.  Everybody has the opportunity to see the beauty, but not enough people realize that they're passing through it.

Not enough people laugh.
Not enough people smile.
Not enough people are brave enough to cry.
Not enough people realize that they're surrounded by beauty.

These people look for things that look beautiful, instead of realizing that beauty can be drawn from anything - a tiny smile or a simple laugh or a kiss on the cheek or being able to go on a walk or even being in a fight, because the ability to argue is a beautiful thing in itself, the ability to communicate everything is so unique and so incredible.

Not enough people have joy in what they do. They look for joy to come to them from the outside, instead of realizing that they're always surrounded by it and it has to come from inside of them.

Life is a beautiful, personal thing.  People need to be selfish enough to allow themselves to enjoy it. 

If everyone were selfish the world would be perfect.  We would all be joyful.  We would all be perfectly happy with everyone else, and we would allow everyone else to be happy as well.  This is selfless: allowing others to be happy.  Sad people are selfless because they try to make other people feel bad for them by allowing others to change who they are, which is selfish.  They don’t want their own joy, they want others to feel bad for her.  If they were selfish, she would tell the world to leave them alone and let them be her own person, but instead, they make others feel worse because they complain about how other people ruin their life, whether or not these are audible complaints, they do come out – this is selfish.  They are making other people less joyful because they are too scared to find their own joy.

We can't control other people, but we can control ourselves, which means that everyone should control themselves.  We should do this by enjoying where we are in every single moment of our lives.

That's joy.

That's beauty.

It's about love

My parents are outstanding at what they do.  They're great people, and have done a great job instilling their great values in my brothers and me.  They always pushed us to do our best in school, and when we got bad grades they were always pretty genuinely disappointed in us.  I have a lot more experience in this category than either of my brothers, so I consider myself the resident expert.  Anyway, I always thought that they just wanted me to get good grades.  I was always pretty scared of bringing home bad report cards.  It was terrifying.

Then I realized that they weren't disappointed in me for getting bad grades.  They were disappointed in my lack of effort.  You see, if John and Jennifer stress one thing, it's going balls to the wall.  I don't remember them ever taking the easy way out, and if I ever did, there was hell to pay.  The two times that my dad has been most angry with me came after basketball games where I didn't play as hard as I could.  As long as I provided effort though, there was never anything but pride for me from them.  That's why I can't stand when people don't try things or if they back away after something goes wrong early.

There's a kid who is infamous at our Lady's fine university purely because of his record levels of douchebaggery.  We're going to call this fellow Scott.

I honestly saw him wearing the exact same outfit as the kid in the pink, and doing it seriously.

I know one person that likes Scott.  One.  As in, that's it.  Literally everybody else that I know who has interacted with Scott has nothing but animosity for him.  Anyway, Scott was in one of my classes, and it's definitely a very hard class.  On the first test, he didn't do as well as he'd hoped, and he decided to drop the class.  Not too uncommon, happens every day in college.  But, this dude already has an internship lined up with Goldman Sachs, the New York Yankees of jobs.  This was an econ class, which is extremely important if he's actually going to be an investment banker, and he decided against toughing it out because he wanted a 4.0 on the semester.  Let's review.  He already has a job for this year, this class would help him learn for his job, but he dropped it because it was hurting his GPA.  This is a serious problem.  Where's the motivation?  Where's the love for learning?  Where's the effort and the hard work?

He's obviously a smart kid, but instead of busting his butt and trying to earn the best grade he possibly can, he's copping out and making himself feel good about himself because of his 4.0.  This really bothers me.  Too many people want results.  Not enough people want to work to get there.  This would be like if Scott had been flown to within a half mile of the peak of a mountain, climbed the rest of the way, and then claimed that he had successfully climbed the mountain.

Bullshit.

The best things in the world are the things that we work to earn, the things that we put our passion into, the things that we love.  It's hard to love something that's placed into your lap, because there's no value to it.  The reason that everybody loves walk-ons is because they're there for the love.  They're not trying to use a college team to vault themselves into the pros.  They're not riding it out for scholarship money.  They know there's a good chance they'll never get playing time, but they love the game and the work is worth it, even if they never get to see the A+ results that they might want.

Someday they'll make a movie called "Tom"

I try to avoid doing things just because the results will benefit me at some point.  Sure I'll benefit from my Notre Dame degree, but I want to love the things that I learn along the way.  I want those to be worth it.  What's the use of a degree if you don't know what you did to get it?  I'm sure there are a lot of people at this school who are here because of the degree they'll get.  That bothers me.

"Why'd you want to come to Notre Dame?"
"Isn't it obvious?  For the girls."

I love this place.  If I didn't I wouldn't be here.  I love everything about it.  It's the greatest place in the world.  There's no place better.  I love it.  And being someplace that you love, doing something you love, being with people you love; these are the greatest feelings in the world.  If we go places to get things and don't enjoy the time we spend going there and being there, if we do things to get results and don't enjoy the actual act, if we meet people and use them just to get something out of them without really valuing them, we're really missing out.

People have asked me why I write this thing.  I love writing.  Writing is a release for me.  I'm really good at having a lot of thoughts, and this is a way to get them out.  It's a way to reassert my beliefs, to make a record of what I think is important, and while there are always certain people I think would find each post valuable, but I don't write because I think I know better than anybody.  I don't want to tell anybody how to live their life or what's important or what they should be doing.  I don't think I'm "holier than thou."  I just need a release. 

That's the other thing about hard work.  The more time we put into something, the more it becomes explicitly ours.  If we take the easy way out, what have we gained?  A meaningless reward?  Trophies and honors and awards mean nothing without the things that they're based off of.  Giving me an Oscar wouldn't make me a good actor, it would just give me a paperweight.  Giving Scott a 4.0 doesn't mean he's learned anything, it just means he knows how to work the system.  I'll take someone with a farmboy work ethic and a value for learning over somebody with good grades any day of the week.  It's not about results.  It's about love.  If results are good, that's just an added bonus.