The Doctor is In
Humans crave stimulants such as caffeine because they improve mood and performance, but we’re particular about our modes of ingestion. For example, No-Doz is an efficient and inexpensive Caffeine Delivery System (CDS for short), yet most users find coffee more appealing. Coffee’s sensory delights of heat, flavor and aroma are the reasons why stimulant-seekers are willing to pay three bucks for a cup of caffeine that would cost 10 cents in pill form.
The lessons of moral philosophy comprise a different kind of stimulant, one that can stir us to better ways of thinking and living. And some of the more practical lessons derived from moral philosophy are distilled into the maxims that we hear throughout our childhood. The problem is that neither philosophical inquiry nor sterile maxims are effective at delivering their messages in easily digestible ways. Tell an impatient driver that “patience is a virtue” and you’re likely to get some road rage upside your head.
But jokes comprise an under-appreciated Maxim Delivery System (MDS for short). They can express important insights into the human condition yet retain a staying power that preachy sayings generally lack. On that note, let me offer three jokes intended to convey practical wisdom that I wish I had digested more completely as an undergrad.
1) A small boy is walking with his grandmother on a deserted stretch of beach. Suddenly an enormous wave rises up, crashes onto the beach and carries the little boy away. The grandmother is stricken with grief and then with anger. She turns her face skyward and reproaches, “God, how could you allow such a thing to happen? My grandson had his whole life before him. If you bring him back I promise that I’ll never ask for anything else as long as I live.” The sky darkens and another huge wave crashes onto the beach. When it recedes the little boy is sitting on the sand, rumpled but unhurt. The grandmother runs over, hugs him, looks at the sky and shouts, “He had a hat!”
Many Harvard students remind me of the demanding grandmother. You have a hard time knowing when to be satisfied, even after you’ve gotten what you thought you had wanted. Of course, unwillingness to rest on one’s laurels can clear a path to great achievements. But at the level of personal happiness, that path can become pathology. Many of my students face the future with a mixture of expectation and dread, each day more attuned to the goals that might elude them (and the embarrassment that might ensue) than to the ones they’ve already conquered. If you learn one thing during your college years, learn when and how to be satisfied. This is not a dress rehearsal; if you’re not happy now, don’t expect a sudden transformation once you graduate. Learn to appreciate something that has gone right every single day. And forget about the damned hat.
2) Shlomo Pinsky is an extremely pious, temperate, Orthodox Jew whose only worldly desire is to win the lottery. Every day he prays to God for help. After many years of prayer but no lottery payoff, Shlomo becomes disillusioned. He asks, “God, why have you forsaken me? I have always followed your laws, I’ve always been a pious man, but you haven’t helped me with the only thing that I’ve asked for.”
Just then a cloud forms overhead and a deep, rumbling voice booms out: “Shlomo, make it a little easier for me. At least buy a ticket!”
No matter how great an achiever you might be, chances are that you have a bit of Shlomo Pinsky in you. How many times have you conceived of an extremely unlikely dream—so daunting that you entertained but never pursued it—and then, when the dream didn’t come to fruition, felt your inaction to have been vindicated?
If you learn one other thing during your college years, learn not only how to be satisfied but when and how to be dissatisfied—dissatisfied enough to take action, even against apparently awful odds, when an elusive goal presents itself. You may not win the lottery (and you probably wouldn’t be happy if you did) but you will test your limits and grow from the experience.
3) The third joke isn’t really a joke at all but a single, great line from the movie Roxanne.
Fred Willard, playing the mayor of a small Colorado town, says (without irony) to a small gathering of citizens, “I would rather be here with you people than with the finest people in the world.”
What can you learn from that line, other than an awesome way to begin a toast?
Simply this: Seek out and retain friends, in college and afterward. I know some very talented adults who feel justified in having few or no friends because no one meets their high standards. Perhaps these perfectionists are being authentic to themselves, but every one of them is also authentically lonely. No matter what riches, fame or influence you might acquire in your lifetime, none will contribute to your happiness or fulfillment in the same way that a group of close friends will. Find them, cultivate them, retain them. They will prove themselves imperfect, as all of us do, but you should prefer to be with them than with the finest people in the world.
So: forget the hat, buy the ticket, make and retain close friends. Imbibe those maxims—make them part of your life—and you’ll leave college much wiser than I did. And if you still have your bad days, a foamy $3 CDS can take the edge off.