49. Relationships Count
Alan Alda, who has gained considerable fame and fortune, has redefined himself as an advocate for better communication. This advocacy includes a podcast of interviews, from which we have drawn content for several TTS CLUES posts. The mission of the podcast is “to develop the qualities of authenticity, clarity, and empathy as the foundation of powerful communication.” In his podcast banner are these impactful words: Relating is Everything.
On the other hand, Hanna Rosin on NPR wonders if we might be at The End of Empathy. She quotes Kenneth Clark, who half-jokingly proposed that people in power should be required to take an “empathy pill” so that they could make better decisions. This suggests that empathy may not be a natural way for some people to relate.
The real test for empathy comes when we consider applying it to those with whom we disagree or just don’t like. It seems increasingly difficult to empathize with those who are different from ourselves, much less with those we don’t like. Are we more governed by tribalism? Yet empathy, adds a researcher, is 90% of what our life is all about.
Maybe empathetic relationships require climbing a mountain. That is what the New York Times columnist, David Brooks, suggests in his book, The Second Mountain. In an interview with David Morgan on “CBS This Morning,” Brooks is reported to be on a mission to help people live deeper and more joyful lives. That mission calls for living to satisfy relationships rather than one’s ego. Brooks explained that the book grew out of a crisis in his own life.
“I had led a life really determined by the lies our culture tells us,” he said. “Our culture tells us if you succeed, you’ll be happy, or I can make myself happy. So, I lived that way, and I ended up valuing time over people. I was always busy; I was on the move, nobody confided in me. I had a lot of work friends, weekday friends; I had no weekend friends.”
In this interview Brooks said, “My marriage ended. My kids left for school, college, and I was living in this little apartment. If you went to my drawers, where there should have been forks and knives, there were Post-it notes. … I was just living for work. I was lonely. … This was 2013. And you just feel, ‘I’m in the valley.’ It was a crisis of disconnection for me, and a lot of people in this country are going through that. There’s a lot of loneliness, a lot of solitude.” He spent the next five years pondering how to get out of that state.
Brooks writes, “Life is defined by two mountains: On the first mountain, people tackle personal goals, like becoming successful; and on the second, people learn to look beyond themselves and instead focus on service to others.” Brooks describes the first mountain as about ego. “I had a first good mountain. I am a New York Times columnist; I get to be on PBS. It was success. You would think from the outside it was success, but it was not feeding my soul. It had turned me into something shallow.”
Brooks said, “Our lives are defined by our moment of greatest adversity, and how we react to it. I found that in the valley, the first thing I learned is, freedom sucks. To be unattached, that’s bad. Total freedom is overrated. … The second thing I learned is you can be broken, or you can be broken open.”
He has come to feel that college students are misled with messages about doing what you love, be free, follow your passion. What they should be told is, “Live for a relationship. That seems easy. We can all say that. But to see people, truly speak from the depths of yourself, not from the surface of yourself, these are daily challenges. And in our society, we just don’t treat each other very well.”
From his book, Brooks states, “People on the first mountain spend a lot of time on reputation management. They ask: What do people think of me? Where do I rank? They’re trying to win the victories the ego enjoys. These hustling years are also powerfully shaped by our individualistic and meritocratic culture. People operate under this assumption: I can make myself happy. If I achieve excellence, lose more weight, follow this self-improvement technique, fulfillment will follow.
“But in the lives of the people I’m talking about — the ones I really admire — something happened that interrupted the linear existence they had imagined for themselves. Something happened that exposed the problem with living according to individualistic, meritocratic values.
“Some of them achieved success and found it unsatisfying. … Others failed. … Yet another group of people got hit sideways by something that wasn’t part of the original plan. … These tragedies made the first-mountain victories seem, well, not so important.”
Perhaps Brooks found wisdom. Here are quotes from him that suggest the nature of that wisdom. “The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that suffering upends the normal patterns of life and reminds you that you are not who you thought you were. … So how does moral renewal happen? How do you move from a life based on bad values to a life based on better ones? First, there has to be a period of solitude, in the wilderness, where self-reflection can occur.”
“Then there is contact with the heart and soul — through prayer, meditation, writing, whatever it is that puts you in contact with your deepest desires. … In the wilderness the desire for esteem is stripped away and bigger desires are made visible: the desires of the heart (to live in loving connection with others) and the desires of the soul (the yearning to serve some transcendent ideal and to be sanctified by that service). When people are broken open in this way, they are more sensitive to the pains and joys of the world. They realize: Oh, that first mountain wasn’t my mountain. I am ready for a larger journey.”
“If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution. On the first mountain, personal freedom is celebrated — keeping your options open, absence of restraint. But the perfectly free life is the unattached and unremembered life. Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in; it is a river you want to cross so that you can plant yourself on the other side. So, the person on the second mountain is making commitments.”
“The second-mountain people are leading us toward a culture that puts relationships at the center. They ask us to measure our lives by the quality of our attachments, to see that life is a qualitative endeavor, not a quantitative one. They ask us to see others at their full depths, and not just as a stereotype, and to have the courage to lead with vulnerability. These second-mountain people are leading us into a new culture.”
“On the first mountain we shoot for happiness, but on the second mountain we are rewarded with joy. What’s the difference? Happiness involves a victory for the self. It happens as we move toward our goals. … Joy involves the transcendence of self. When you’re on the second mountain, you realize we aim too low. … On the second mountain you see that happiness is good, but joy is better.”
Q: To what degree is your life full of joy as Brooks describes it?
