"The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself."
The first time I read this article in the New York Times, I hated it.
To me it represents all of the bad sides of conservatism as a social movement. The argument is essentially to go out and follow in the well trod path which also conveniently benefits all of the people who've already made it to the end of that pathway.Of course current bosses would like it if you took whatever salary they offered without arguing, and took on scut jobs and 50 hour work weeks you weren't hired for but they're too cheap to actually pay someone for. The fact that Brook essentially argues that you should go out, get married, get a job, and then find yourself trapped in that job because you need to support a family doesn't help. It reads to me "Go out, trap yourself, and wait for your midlife crisis to do anything interesting".
Then I read Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and it made me take a second look at that article. I still disagree with it in a lot of fundamental ways, but I see it as more of a chicken and the egg problem. Brooks decries what he sees as self-centeredness in the argument that people should go out and find themselves. He claims that if people devote themselves to their community eventually something will grab them and they'll have been useful in the meanwhile. If they try to find themselves, they'll leave behind everything as soon as they aren't currently happy. But whoever said that finding yourself meant making your life easy? Or looking inwards? Finding yourself pretty often involves finding your place. That 22 year old who's still too shallow to figure out what they want is also too shallow to marry, or make any sort of permanent bond. If they've made it to the end of our educational system, it certainly wasn't because they were just doing the things that made them happy.
But I think he has something in arguing that you can only really find what you need by giving up what you think you want. Because, eventually you find the things that you can't give up, and at that point you've found yourself. In Diamond Age we find three girls raised with the same knowledge, but with three very different outcomes. One grows up a dreamer, one is a rebel, and one will go on to do Great Things. The difference is that only one has learned the value of appreciating the things you already have, and humility. A constant urge to tear everything down so that you can return and create a perfect beginning just results in your going no where, and ego battles just leave you stuck going at loggerheads. Sometimes it really isn't about you - ego at the door. In the end people end up doing great things for love - of course.
So he's right, finding yourself is losing yourself to something larger than yourself. He's wrong because he makes it sound like passion is the end result of giving in to pain. That way lies a passion for suicide. Passion is really something that you know you've found when you're willing to stand the pain it takes to get to it.
We all need to think more along the lines of My Friend Flicka :).
To me it represents all of the bad sides of conservatism as a social movement. The argument is essentially to go out and follow in the well trod path which also conveniently benefits all of the people who've already made it to the end of that pathway.Of course current bosses would like it if you took whatever salary they offered without arguing, and took on scut jobs and 50 hour work weeks you weren't hired for but they're too cheap to actually pay someone for. The fact that Brook essentially argues that you should go out, get married, get a job, and then find yourself trapped in that job because you need to support a family doesn't help. It reads to me "Go out, trap yourself, and wait for your midlife crisis to do anything interesting".
Then I read Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and it made me take a second look at that article. I still disagree with it in a lot of fundamental ways, but I see it as more of a chicken and the egg problem. Brooks decries what he sees as self-centeredness in the argument that people should go out and find themselves. He claims that if people devote themselves to their community eventually something will grab them and they'll have been useful in the meanwhile. If they try to find themselves, they'll leave behind everything as soon as they aren't currently happy. But whoever said that finding yourself meant making your life easy? Or looking inwards? Finding yourself pretty often involves finding your place. That 22 year old who's still too shallow to figure out what they want is also too shallow to marry, or make any sort of permanent bond. If they've made it to the end of our educational system, it certainly wasn't because they were just doing the things that made them happy.
But I think he has something in arguing that you can only really find what you need by giving up what you think you want. Because, eventually you find the things that you can't give up, and at that point you've found yourself. In Diamond Age we find three girls raised with the same knowledge, but with three very different outcomes. One grows up a dreamer, one is a rebel, and one will go on to do Great Things. The difference is that only one has learned the value of appreciating the things you already have, and humility. A constant urge to tear everything down so that you can return and create a perfect beginning just results in your going no where, and ego battles just leave you stuck going at loggerheads. Sometimes it really isn't about you - ego at the door. In the end people end up doing great things for love - of course.
So he's right, finding yourself is losing yourself to something larger than yourself. He's wrong because he makes it sound like passion is the end result of giving in to pain. That way lies a passion for suicide. Passion is really something that you know you've found when you're willing to stand the pain it takes to get to it.
We all need to think more along the lines of My Friend Flicka :).