Making the most of ourselves as thinking, feeling, and sensing individuals
I recently posted on my blog a quote from William Lyon Phelps:
The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.
Bill Peschel sent along in response a quote from Dorothy Parker:
Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzsche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake and Poe. One wonders, with hungry curiosity, what were some of the other definitions that Professor Phelps chucked aside in order to give preference to this one.
I suggested in turn that Phelps may well have thought that, apart from Socrates, the people mentioned did not have the sort of interesting thoughts he had in mind. I also added that Blake seems to have been a genuinely happy man.
Whereupon my friend Susan Balée weighed in that Blake was “a nutter.” This may well have been the case, but if Peter Ackroyd’s excellent biography is to be trusted — and I know of no reason why it shouldn’t be — Blake was also happy. Susan then suggested he was manic without being depressive. Can’t say myself. There’s at least the possibility that he was genuinely visionary.
The term common to this whole roundabout of course is happiness, which is one of those things, like pornography, that is recognizable enough, but not so easy to define. The rich, famous miserable person is common enough for us all to know that, whatever happiness may be, ample cash flow and notoriety don’t necessarily contribute to it.
I actually think Phelps (1865- 1943), a scholar and critic well-known in his day, but now largely forgotten, was on to something. I should also mention in passing that Dorothy Parker would not herself appear to have been much of an authority on the subject.
Anyway, in my understanding of what Phelps said, it seems the focus isn’t on great artists, authors and composers, but on those who read, listen to, and look at the works they created. Goethe said something to the effect that every day one should look at a good painting, read a good poem, and listen to a fine piece of music. I think that’s pretty much what Phelps was getting at, too.
After all, he specifically refers to “those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation.” I suppose some would dismiss this view as hopelessly middle-brow or vulgarly utilitarian. Others might see it as elitist. I see it as humanism pure and simple.
The humanities are so called because they are thought to help us be more fully human by enabling us to make the most of ourselves as thinking, feeling, and sensing individuals. The really vulgar utilitarian approach comes about when we become preoccupied over whether a thought is right or wrong in some narrow sense.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Was Keats right or wrong? I would say he was neither, but that what he says at the end of his ode is worth thinking about in an open-ended way, to see where the train of thought it inspires leads. It is called contemplation and is thought by some to contribute to happiness.
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Not that I’m comparing Jimmy Valvano to any “great” thinkers. But a man on his deathbed has a habit of sounding profound. In his final speech, he exhorts us all when he says…
“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”
Like Jimmy V, I think William Lyon Phelps was on to something.
“Great” thinkers think great thoughts. The things Jim Valvano said in his ESPY speech seem like great thoughts to me.
Great post, Frank … thanks for sharing. With all due respect to Ms. Parker, I’m with Phelps on this one … he WAS on to something.
Jeffrey your comment and quote from Jim Valvano, helped me recall some lines from Ray Bradbury’s short story,”Colonel Stonesteel’s Truly Egyptian Mummy,” where young Charlie asks his elderly friend …
“What if I have a life chock full of things, never bored, find what I want to do, DO it, make every day count, every night swell, sleep tight, wake up yelling, laugh lots, grow old still running fast, what then, Colonel?”
“Why then, boy, you’ll be one of God’s luckiest people!”
May we all be so lucky.
Nietzsche and others may have been frequently unhappy but, i guess, were less unhappy because of their thoughts. To take another, frequently unhappy, philosopher, Wittgenstein probably would have committed suicide in his early 20s if he didn’t suddenly find that he was good at philosophy. Throughout his life he came close to suicide but each time managed to lose himself (or rather, lose his unhappiness – and so, perhaps, to find himself) in doing philosophy.
And the thoughts by which he staved off suicide have given pleasure to many others, to lesser minds such as myself.
Perhaps if one cannot be happy, one at least can avoid being bored, and thus stave off suicide. Is it a thought worth contemplating, whether right or wrong? (It’s my own.)
Hi Jericho,
When I was in an emergency care unit a few years ago I found that the only thing that kept my spirits up was observing what was going on – to me, in me, and around me. It is never boring, but you can become bored. Only you mustn’t let that happen.
Here is Frank’s column about boredom.