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While I was giving that little concert recently, a neighborhood girl about seven or eight years old came to watch and listen with that look of wide-eyed fascination which you see only in children. It struck me that this might have been the first time she had ever witnessed someone making live music, so I gave her a big wink. ;-)
I like the fact that we talk of giving a concert and making music. Music is indeed a gift, as are all the arts. Certain people are drawn to these forms of making and giving, seemingly out of a superabundance of aliveness, creative energy, or imagination. Here again I perceive similarities to the freehearted giving of love in all its forms: parenting, romance, friendship, neighborliness, brotherhood, etc.
José Ortega y Gasset touches on these matters in his book On Love, although he couches them in an old-fashioned (to my mind) psychology of the sexes. Consider the following two quotes:
A man feels love primarily as a violent desire to be loved, whereas for a woman the primary experience is to feel love itself, the warm flow which radiates from her being toward her beloved and the impulse toward him. The need to be loved is felt by her only consequently and secondarily.
And:
Every woman appears to be a little saint, if we think that saintliness consists in sliding over life without letting oneself be compromised by it. And, yet, the truth is exactly the opposite: that almost unreal figure is merely awaiting the opportunity to throw herself - with such impetus, decisiveness, courage, and unconcern for painful consequences - into an impassioned whirlwind, that she outdoes the most resolute man, who sheepishly discovers himself to be of a practical, calculating, and vacillating temperament.
The traits that Ortega uncovers here are, I think, more widely distributed than he lets on: they are not a matter of sexuality but of personality. I, for one, seem to be the kind of passionately giving person he describes. In my youth I worked hard to hide these aspects of myself because certain early experiences made me well acquainted with some of the painful consequences Ortega alludes to. Furthermore, I agree with Ortega that there's a certain sort of courage and fearlessness wrapped up with throwing oneself into the impassioned whirlwind of personal relationships and creative activities. It's not for everyone, and it wasn't for me either until I slowly came to see that this is what life is all about.
I'll let Ortega have the last word: "Let others think what they like: for me, the culmination of life consists of a pure and subtly dramatic passion."
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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Lately I've been re-reading one of my favorite books: On Love by José Ortega y Gasset. I've long found Ortega's essays to be the most insightful analysis ever written regarding matters of the heart (and, with some reflection on the reader's part, by extension the love and creation of art). Ortega holds that the choices you make in the people you love and the artworks you treasure are deeply intertwined with your underlying vision of what matters in life, which he calls metaphysical sentiment. Just as Yeats wondered how we can know the dancer from the dance, Ortega wonders how we can know the singer from the song or the lover from the love or the thinker from the thoughts: for instance, in the context of talking about the philosophic conclusions of Stendhal and of Pío Baroja, he observes that "in the manner of songs they tell a truth, not about things, but about the singer."
Having recently given a little concert, I was struck yet again by Ortega's observations. My feeling about musical performance is that it should be a barely controlled cauldron of emotion lit by a sacred fire of passionate presence. At the least, this is how I approach my own performances, whether I'm singing "All Along the Watchtower" or "St. James Infirmary" or one of my own compositions. If I'm not putting my entire soul into the music, why am I playing and singing in the first place? The same goes for my attitude to love and friendship: the point is to engage in freehearted giving, not some coldhearted calculation of benefits and costs. Yes, this requires some form of courage in the face of vulnerability and the inevitability of loss, but if I'm not living to the hilt why am I living in the first place? When I resided in New York City back in college, a fortune cookie I opened at some Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side said it perfectly: "One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name."
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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Most of the reflections I've read on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence look back to the past, either to the founding or to the bicentennial celebrations in 1976 (yes, I'm old enough to remember seeing the tall ships on Long Island Sound from Sunset Park in my boyhood town of Sea Cliff, NY). Yet "semiquincentennial" means the anniversary that's halfway to the five-hundredth, so I'm thinking ahead to the year 2276.
If America still exists at that point, it might be as different from America today as America today is from America in 1776 - transformed by continual change, made up of somewhat different peoples through ethnic attrition and continual streams of immigration, with new population centers and perhaps even different states and borders, etc. Yet I suppose that even in 2276 we Americans will still be trying to figure out who we are and how to live up to the ideals set forth in the Declaration, since that's an open-ended task which will never be completed. I also expect that America will continue to be rather different from other places in the world in our focus on personal freedom, our dedication to voluntarism and localism, our skepticism about the state, our mixing and integration of peoples from all over the globe, a culture that Albert Murray called fundamentally mulatto, and much else besides. But really, who knows?
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
Self-knowledge is difficult to acquire, but liberating once attained. Yet it happens, if at all, in a piecemeal fashion - something like the personal counterpart of what historian Carroll Quigley called, at the level of civilizations, "the gradual and communal search for truth". Recently I realized, while reflecting further on one of the soul workouts I completed six months ago, that I have become a very giving person. This comes as something of a surprise to me, because in my teens and early twenties I was very arrogant and self-absorbed. (I suppose many people are at that age, but it's something I regret - although, as I like to say, you're doing well if most of the things you regret doing happened before the age of 25.)
Although I can't quite account for it, the stance of freehearted giving that has emerged within me must have somehow grown over a span of years. Indeed, I feel that this stance is still in the early stages of blooming, because commitments that I never would have considered earlier in life keep coming unbidden to my mind as completely right - so right that I almost immediately decide to pursue them without much further reflection. The activities and behaviors involved can range from small to huge - from little gifts I've been giving to people I know would appreciate them, through steadfast assistance I've been giving to close friends and relatives, to massively meaningful offerings that are literally life-changing for a few special people in my life.
I don't know if the capacity for freehearted giving was always latent within me or whether it's something that has been activated through my experience of life. Even though it feels like an instance of becoming who you are (as Nietzsche put it), in the end I suppose it doesn't make much of a difference what the underlying cause really is.
I'm aware that freehearted giving can be rather risky, because I know that in the past some people have exploited this emerging propensity of mine. However, I tend to think I'm a fairly good judge of people and I've always been a cautious person; these qualities act as a counterweight to a developing level of generosity that could otherwise land me in trouble. As always, finding the beautifully right balance isn't easy, but I'm doing the best I can...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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If ethics is what you do, then it seems likely that politics is what you do, too. For instance, the other day I received two primary ballots from my county clerk's office (here in Colorado we have the option of voting in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary). Looking at all the names confirmed my commitment to abstain from voting for any of the candidates because none of these people can truly represent me and the rather out-of-the-mainstream way that I think about res publica. Then I had an additional realization: the most philosophical approach to politics is not to delegate my decision-making powers but to make my own decisions.
How do I cash out this rather abstract statement? Through the practices I've made part of my own life. As one example, I am in favor of immigration because I think that people who choose to become Americans not only help us live up to our ideals but also make America a better place; yet instead of forming opinions about immigration policy or contacting my elected representatives, I tutor immigrants in English as a second language (which, I must say, often turns into "America as a second culture"). As another example, I continue to be horrified by Vladimir Putin's despicable war on Ukraine; yet instead of closely following the situation on the ground or trying vainly to influence diplomatic efforts to end the war, I donate to charities in Ukraine that are helping the long-suffering people there. Finally, as previously described, I also serve as president of my neighborhood association, where I've been able to make a difference in the quality of life enjoyed by my neighbors. I find all of these activities much more meaningful than protesting, voting, or reading the news.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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It seems to be a truism that the real task of writing begins with the editing phase; indeed, apparently many writers slave over two, three, four, or more drafts before they're happy with the final product. Yet this is not my experience at all: almost everything I publish is a first draft. It's true that usually I think about a topic, often for quite a while, before putting pen to paper; with my forthcoming book about Aristotle I've even gone so far as to make lists of the points to cover in each chapter before sitting down to write. However, for me the composing itself flows quickly and easily. Instead of seeing the task of writing as removing the cruft, I prefer not to generate any cruft in the first place, which strikes me as much more straightforward. Am I a freak of nature or am I missing something essential? Then again, I don't consider myself to be a writer, so maybe it doesn't matter if I'm doing it all wrong...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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