A couple of years ago (when we were in full swing quarantine) I started listening to a philosopher called Alain de Button. He is a Swiss-born British author who I have found quite compelling. I am currently reading his book, Art as Therapy and have The Architecture of Happiness in my book pile at home to read.
I highly recommend watching some of his "School of Life" content on YouTube.
Here are a few things he has to say on different subjects. You must read these in your best English accent.
On relationships He argues that of course nobody is going to love you for who you are and that NOBODY should be subjected to the full extent of "exactly who you are" because there are parts of all of us that are horrible. In fact, instead of trying to beguile people into thinking we are perfect, when we meet them we should just cut to the chase and ask: "How are you crazy?" and then tell them how we are crazy.
Recognize the nobility of compromise. Compromise is a massive achievement in love."
I think it probably doesn't take more than 22 years to see the wisdom of that last sentence. In fact, how better to put love into action than to compromise? There are definitely some people who are better at negotiating that compromise than others and maybe the goal is to learn to be one of those people.
On parenting (I wish I had known to say this much earlier!):
"The job of a parent is to let down a child in a structured way - to gently introduce them to the misery of existence...at an overly young age I would say to [my children], 'It's not that I'm a particularly horrible person, it's just that you're encountering the horribleness of life through me first, but you will later see that this is a general phenomenon. You just met with it first here.'"
He says that one of the unrecognized great exports from the British Isles is melancholy. There is an art to it. Once we recognize that life is quite horrible, then you can appreciate much more of it.
The other day I had a conversation with a student mid-teaching. He announced loudly that his back hurt. I said, "I think it's pretty normal for backs to hurt. In fact, maybe instead of saying, 'My back hurts,' you should say, 'My back feels really normal.'" He thought that was a horrible way to think of it, but I thought that it makes it so that you can appreciate days when your back doesn't hurt more. Instead of taking it for granted that your back won't hurt, when it doesn't, you can announce loudly, "My back feels amazing!"
5 comments:
Do you know what? You are totally right. Reading things with an English accent is fun. Fun fun fun. Thank you for suggesting it. In fact, possibly you should read this with an English accent and see how far you get.
Now I am going to keep talking with an English accent to see how well Google voice comes up with the correct words.
As smashing conversations go I would say that tonight‘s conversation with you was entirely more smashing than any conversation I had prior during the week. In fact, if we were to sit around eating biscuits and talking them in your liquid of choice and fine, I don’t think I could’ve had a more smashing time. Being on separate continents and yet talking to each other with crystal clear quality of sound is nothing shy of miraculous. I do believe channelling David Attenborough is the way to go on certifying English accents.
It had just about the same number of mistakes with my English accent as it doesn’t wanna use my American accent.
I'm torn between thinking your guy sounds dreary and thinking he sounds brilliant! I need to check out some of his videos, I guess. One of my podcasts (I think I linked it on my blog, it was about being delightful), talked about how pessimism is part of British culture. There is a children's sitcom that has a theme song that repeats, "It'll never work...it'll never work..." Maybe that is what happens when you grow up with so many gray days.
This is interesting stuff. I think I will check out his videos. It is a really honest and raw approach to life and thinking. It seems like both a wonderful and hard way to think, or maybe it is wonderful because you are so aware of the hard you appreciate the good more? Good thoughts, thanks for sharing.
That is a very interesting way of thinking and I actually like it. Too many people are on a quest to make things perfect when it's never going to happen. Why not accept the lack of perfection and celebrate the times when things actually go right.
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