In a half-kidding way, I often say to friends or family that something is the secret of life. Not literally, of course. DNA is the secret of life. For now. I mean hard won knowledge or folk wisdom that we can live by. You know, the secrets of life. Like:
“Marry money.”
“Respect the power of compound Interest.”
“Trust the scientific method.”
“In class, take copious notes. In books, underline important points.” The physical act imprints stuff on the mind.
“Do your job.” Bell Belichick’s shorthand for successful teamwork.
In a similar vein, this anecdote form Tommy Tune, Broadway dancer and choreographer. As a young man he was in a play directed by Gene Kelly. shortly before the opening he finally got up the nerve to ask the legend if he was doing okay.
Kelly said, Tommy, I’m going to tell you what Fed Astaire once told me.” “What?” Tune asked, awestruck. “He said, ‘Gene, Dance Better’.”
A recent experience with the medical establishment provided me with this surefire secret. “When a man wearing a mask with a knife in his hand approaches, if it’s not too late, get off the operating table, put on your pants, and go home.”
Need another health tip? Things that are addictive — alcohol, opioids, tobacco, etc. — feel good until they don’t. And then you can’t quit feeling worse and worse.
“All things in moderation. nothing is excess” was good enough for the Oracle of Delphi, it will probably be good enough for you.
From antiquity through the Middle Ages, plenty of warnings about the brevity of life and against the danger of hubris were proverbial. For instance: “Carpe Diem,” Seize the day. But also “Memento Mori,” remember death is just around the corner. This notion is visualized in “Et in Arcadia Ego” paintings which depict an idyllic landscape with a skull hidden in a corner, reminding that even in paradise death is lurking.
The ubiquitous Danse Macabre told the same tale, as the grim reaper took kings and popes, knights and peasants indiscriminately to their end. And then there were the pictures of rotting skeletons who reminded the viewer “Fui quod es, eris quod sum.” That is, “As you are, I once was; as I am, you soon will be.”
The importance of the nose to the grindstone is proverbial. “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” said Pasteur. “Genius is one percent inspiration, 99% perspiration.” Edison.
However, straining after a rational solution isn’t always successful. The breakthrough often arrives when you have relaxed and allowed the subconscious to do its magic. The men of the heroic age of nuclear physics, Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Pauli, often admitted the best ideas arrived not when working at the blackboard but when at ease in the three Bs — “the Bed, the Bath, the Bus.”
Some so-called wisdom literature is all about rational analysis, some about intuition.
“The Enchiridion” of Epictetus, a Roman Stoic, suggests the secret of life lies in learning what you can control, and what you can’t.
“There are things within our power, and things which are beyond our power.” Our opinions, aims, desires and aversions are within our power, but our body, property, reputation or status in life are not.
“If you attribute freedom to things not in your power, you will lament, be disturbed, and find fault with gods and men.”
“Seek to be able to say of anything beyond your power, it is nothing to me. Restrain desire, understand the nature of things, and expect nothing to be otherwise.”
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of things. Don’t demand that events should be as you wish them to happen but as they do happen.”
“Remember that you are an actor in a drama. Your job is to act well the part, to chose it belongs to another.”
An even more austere gospel of non-attachment is to be found in the “Tao Te Ching” which advises “creating, yet not possessing. Working, yet not taking credit.”
“Not exalting the gifted prevents quarreling. Not collecting treasure prevents stealing. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech be true. In ruling, be just. In business, be competent. In action, watch the timing. No fight, no blame.”
“Accept misfortune as the human condition. Surrender yourself humbly, then you can be trusted to care for all things.”
Yet most of us are at the other extreme than this relinquishment of attachment to the quotidian. Being a Stoic or a Taoist is beyond our power. As the Book of Ecclesiastes warns, “All is vanity and a vexation of the spirit.” And we all are prone to the power of vanity.
In Ecclesistes, a sadder, but wiser king is speaking in his old age. A witty, sardonic French Duke, La Rochefoucauld, came to a similar conclusion 2,800 years later. To him, the key to man was his self-love, or vanity, which cares for nothing but itself and leads to jealousy, envy, desire, blindness, and folly. This philosophy is expressed in his maxims.
“Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.”
“ We all have sufficient fortitude to endure the misfortunes of others.”
“Our evils do not produce as much hatred and persecution as our good qualities.”
“If we had no faults we wouldn’t find such pleasure in pointing out those of others.”
“We are far from knowing all the things our passions make us do.”
“We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not speak of ourselves at all. “
“We are furious at being deceived by others, but are constantly deceiving ourselves.”
“Everyone complains of his memory, no one of his judgement.”
“The head is always the dupe of the heart.”
Our America sages include Thoreau with his admonitions to “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” and to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Instead of “leading lives of quiet desperation” getting and spending, “frittered away by detail” we should try contemplation.
“To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip.” We should open or eyes to the world around us, the natural world in particular. “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.”
Poetry deals with such eternal verities — nature, time, love, death — and thus contains secrets of life galore. Finding a poet to your taste will provide beauty and consolation is a world of trouble. Some of my favorite consolers are Donne, Marvell, Coleridge, Keats, Arnold, Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy, Housman, Frost, Auden, and Larkin.
One final secret of life is from Randall Jarrell, and following his advice accounts for the list above: “Read at Whim.”
But wait, it’s almost the Fourth of July, so it would be wrong not to suggest that important sercets to American life can be found in the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. Lest we forget, secrets can be lost.