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?