How Reading Biographies Can Enrich Your Life
Finding Ourselves in the Flaws and Triumphs of History’s “Heroes”
People lead messy lives.
In our world inundated with toxic positivity where “The Power of Positive Thinking” and The Secret have become cultural touchstones for rugged individualism and perfectionism, it may seem weak for some to acknowledge trauma or introspect into the complicated dimensions of ourselves. It’s not. We cannot just wish things into existence as these philosophies magically suggest. Sometimes, we have to be stoic and accept how things are.
People are not perfect. Even those whom history has painted as perfect are still not perfect. Using The Secret or the Power of Positive Thinking cannot change this.
This is where reading biographies can significantly enrich our lives.
Meeting your heroes
They say it is wise to avoid meeting your heroes. The standard thinking goes that if you knew how messed up they were, they wouldn’t still be your heroes. But this completely misses the point.
Your heroes had flaws, as you do. By reading about their internal struggles and how they coped with them, you can metaphorically manipulate entanglement and become intrinsically linked with them in quantum-speak.
Humanizing our heroes goes against the Great Man Theory of History, which is just a toxic form of masculinity we use to justify male rule. The theory states that people come along at certain times in human history with the correct kind of leadership traits needed for that moment to change the world. Cyrus the Great set the Jews free of their captivity in Babylon, and only Cyrus could have done it, according to this theory. Commonly mentioned among such people are Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln.
But assume you wanted to go beyond the hero worship and study any of these lives in depth. Take Gandhi. Understanding this historical figure who helped India gain independence from the British is undoubtedly fascinating. We all know that Gandhi took his influence from Hinduism and, more specifically, the text of the Bhagavad Gita. We know Gandhi’s pacifist stance was influenced by Tolstoy, who passed this down to MLK, Jr. He saw fasting as a quest for self-discipline and moral purity. We know he valued the principles of non-violence and truth, not just as abstract principles or political catchphrases but as fundamental to his way of life.
But while all that background information into Gandhi’s greatness is interesting, those are all SAT answers to questions. These are facts you were forced to learn to graduate high school. But does it humanize Gandhi or present him as one of the “great men” in history, a vessel of God, and someone better than all of us?
Sometimes, humanizing people means we have to undeify them.
I find reading Gandhi’s autobiography, where he reveals who he is, much more fascinating. He talks about things he did as a child, such as stealing some gold from his brother, his faults as a married man and his spousal abuse, his early racial prejudices, the dietary restrictions that he imposed on his family in an authoritative form, his hypocrisies, his struggle and fear of public speaking, and his struggle to overcome pride. Now, this Gahandi fascinates me. He shows me that a “great man” who truly changed the world for the better can coexist with someone less than perfect and severely flawed. Unlike those who may want to shut him out from history after learning of his shortcomings, I find studying the totality of his being to be a more challenging and brave journey.
It is scary to admit our heroes aren’t perfect.
We should want to understand how greatness and personal shortcomings can coexist in the same human beings. We can’t even say our saints are perfect. They aren’t. As Oscar Wilde said…
Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.
If you expected perfection in St. Augustine, you would be disappointed. But Augustine was self-aware, and whether or not you agree with his theology (which I don’t), he was probably more responsible than anyone for bringing the genre of “autobiography” into existence. And though we can’t doubt Mother Teresa’s greatness as a woman who cared for the poor, sick, and dying, Christopher Hitchens had quite a different view of her.
Perhaps the distinction between “saint” and “sinner” is not so simple. Billy Joel once said he would rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
I grew up thinking Einstein was a perfect person. Then I read The Private Lives of Albert Einstein, showing his humanness and many of his flaws. But recognizing my kinship with him as a fellow spectrumite only strengthed my admiration for him. He was not the superhuman I thought he was as a child. I always love to read biographies about people speculated to have been on the autism spectrum, such as Alan Turing or Emily Dickinson.
Over the past week, I saw the movie biopic about Leonard Bernstein. It presented him in a reasonably balanced way but not as a saint. This is what moved me — his greatness as a composer and conductor, the complicated marriage with his wife, Felicia Montealgre, and the strain this put on his children. If Bernstein was born happily ever after and lived happily ever after, it would be hard to find his life story exciting or enriching.
Lincoln, of course, also was not flawless. His positions, at times, were sometimes taken out of pragmaticism rather than on solid principles, such as opposing the expansion of slavery into new territories and states because he wanted to preserve the Union and not necessarily because he was basing this opinion on the bedrock of the Constitution. At one time, he sent African Americans back to where they came from, believing this was a solution to the problem of racism. He was also melancholic, as am I. And while I find some of Lincoln’s views deplorable, even when factoring in the age he lived in, no one doubts his invaluable contributions to the United States. He was a complicated man. Messy. As many “great men” are.
I guess that’s the point: We all are this way. You can go to a symphony and hear the wonderous music of Tchaikovsky and then come home and read about the tortured soul who struggled to live in Imperial Russia as a result of his homosexuality. You can see an exhibit of Van Gogh’s paintings at your local art museum, come home, and read about his time at Saint-Rémy asylum after having felt like a perpetual outcast all of his life, and his deep emotional expression, which could only be found in his letters and on the canvas. If Van Gogh had led a wholly charmed existence, would his paintings be as beautiful to the eye as they are?
Wrapping it up
Reach back in time and meet your heroes, wrinkles and all.
Each biography is a journey through someone else’s reality — a mix of their battles, dreams, failures, and victories. Walk a mile in their shoes across time, not to stock up facts, filling your head with dates and events as if you were taking that dreaded old SAT. But instead, really try to connect with these figures on a human level, seeing parts of yourself in them.
If we take this approach when reading people’s biographies, we can apply this understanding in our daily lives, acknowledging the humanity in ourselves and others; we can foster a more empathetic, inclusive, and understanding world. A world where the stories of our heroes and ourselves are not just tales of triumphs but also of learning, growing, and overcoming. This is the greatest lesson we can take from the lives of those we admire: the beauty and strength in embracing the full spectrum of the human experience, with all its flaws and splendors.
