Westmont Magazine David Brooks on Lies About Life and the Four Great Commitments
David Brooks believes we want intensity in life more than happiness. “We want to do something that is hard, something worth wanting,” he said. We experience that intensity as children, but the emphasis on good grades and achievement lessens it, and students think their parents value grades more than becoming a good person and developing character.
Brooks identified lies our society tell us:
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I can be self-sufficient.
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I can make myself happy.
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Life is an individual journey.
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You have to find your own truth.
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You are what you accomplish and what brands you attach yourself to.
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The worst lie: People who have achieved more are worth more.
While political freedom is good, social freedom is not. An unattached person is not connected to anything. “You can be broken or you can be broken open,” Brooks said. Some people become incapable of being open to others, which leads to tribalism, or association based on mutual hatred of something or someone.
“Other people get broken open, and a community is people joined by what they love,” Brooks said. “When you see deeper into yourself, only emotional and spiritual food will feed those cavities. We have a yearning soul and a need to protect other souls. We’re morally responsible for what we do, which gives us equality. Souls are all infinite and equal.”
Brooks encouraged the audience to learn how to be good at building deep relationships, to practice radical hospitality and mutuality, and to overinvest in friendship. Caring for one another is important, and he quoted Annie Dillard about “our inexplicable care for each other.” “Deep in yourself is a highway right out of self,” he said. “We spend our life wishing for too little; we need to step outside of ourselves. Only relationships turn around lives.”
Brooks listed four big commitments: to our spouse or family, our vocation, our community and our faith. The choices we make in these areas will determine the quality of our lives. By making commitments, we choose the chains that bind us, which then set us free. They give us important things in life, such as identity, a sense of meaning and purpose and an understanding of our character as we identify our weaknesses and seek to overcome them. Brooks defined character as falling in love with something and wanting to behave unselfishly toward it. “You get captured by a level of commitment you could not have imagined,” he said. “This makes you a little less selfish, and you continue to learn to be a little less selfish. Character is formed both by internal drama and by external commitment.”
“How do you choose your vocation?” he asked. “It’s different than a career, when you take your skills and knowledge and figure out how to sell them in the marketplace. In a vocation, you are called to something; something outside of you summons you. It becomes part of your identity. Often we have things we are scratching at, trying to get an answer. My books are versions of trying to write myself into a deeper life. Most of us never get to our true self because life has covered it over, and we lose our desire. Our life is here, our heart is there.
“Ask yourself, what problem am I uniquely suited to serve? What has my life prepared me for? What keeps me up at night? Become equipped to serve and then execute the work you’re called to do.” People who have found their vocation become meticulous about their work, doing it day after day.
“Most of life is choosing what you already chose, just as all writing is rewriting and all commitment-making is recommitment.” he said. “Our lives are stories of recommitment. We need to learn the virtue of staying put and staying true. That’s one of the main reasons we go to church—not so much to make spiritual progress every week, although that’s wonderful when it happens. We mostly come for the consistency, for what remains the same from week to week, the comfort of the liturgy, the solace of the music, the reassuring sight of familiar faces, and the enduring presence of ancient rites and rituals, we remind ourselves of our values that unite us and the commitments that keep us heading in the right direction.”
Brooks shared what he has learned about marriage from research and books by experts. He advises his college students to take the decision about marriage seriously, defining it as a 50-year conversation. “Marry someone you want to talk to that long,” he said. “Everyone thinks about the other person and whether that person is right for them. But the person who can screw up the marriage is you. Ask questions about yourself. Are you ready to get married? Are you willing to be changed? Do you admire this person? Marriage can’t survive disrespect. It’s so every day.”
While everyone wants a joyous marriage, Brooks says too many people settle for less and coast through a “truce marriage.” He quoted Jane Austen, who opposed settling because it insults the other person. Some people don’t want a marriage that impinges on their individual lives. Brooks encourages people to seek the maximum marriage and to recommit themselves even in a dull marriage, freely taking on the responsibility for another. Rather than falling in love, we sometimes need to march back into it. Marriage is a hard education, like rocks tumbling together, smoothing each other out. At some point, you realize the amazing person you married is selfish. In a truce marriage, you don’t talk about this, but in a real marriage, you do and decide your own selfishness is the problem.
Marriage is an internal battle between the heart and the ego, and those that last mute the ego. They involve friends who see each other clearly. The key is good communication that steadily gets better; the quality of the conversation reveals the quality of the marriage. “You need to move toward each other much more than you move away,” he said. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln embraced the South, used “we” language and identified slavery as an American problem, saying: “With malice toward none, with charity toward all.” Look for ways to praise your spouse. Brag about your partner when they can overhear you. Cultivate a romantic’s heart and a bit of an engineer’s head. Make the small decisions that lead to a happy life.