The Action of Living

August –

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and philosophy.

An observation: have you ever considered that a huge factor in your life has been that you did not marry and have children? You could have had exactly the same convictions and guiding spirit, but gotten thrown off the path if you had to worry about a wife and children. This is not to say that you are selfish, far from it. It’s just that, when you’re married with children, life tends to get in the way of what you want to do with your life.

Peter

Great question Peter.

But don’t give up on me yet. I forgot to tell you that the only reason we started this damn website was to help me find a wife that could put up with my pontificating.

Seriously, I do think being single has had implications. I have taken risks that I probably could not have taken in good conscience with a family. I’ve been able to do a lot of thinking and reading that was not directly concerned with the exigencies of life. Third, as I mentioned in Business Secrets of the Trappists, faith is critical. Faith that if you live the “right kind of life” everything else will fall into place. Living with that kind of faith alone is hard enough. Finding a spouse who shares it makes it that much harder. A spouse that is willing to walk away from what looks like a sure thing and safe bet in order to aim higher.

I’m sure there are many women out there who would shame me in the faith department (again, if you know any send them my way!) but family does complicate things. The answer is increasing the supply of faith by getting back to what used to be called “character formation.” Learning that virtue is its own reward is something we should learn young. It is a lot easier to make marriage work if you are marrying someone who shares your values. The decline in religious training in America because so many think it is nothing but brainwashing has had grave implications because we have failed to come up with alternatives. “I don’t care what you do as long as you are happy” is a poor substitute and poor parenting as many of my college students have pointed out.

What we need are schools that develop kids morally as well as intellectually. This is what my mentor Louis Mobley’s IBM Executive School did and B-Schools do not. Socrates said that Arête, or what might be translated as “excellence of character,” cannot be taught. Intellectually. But he said it can be “midwifed” or “mentored” through experiential rather than didactic learning techniques. This is what I’ve been trying to do for 20 years with college kids. We do very little think/talk stuff. I try to come up with “exercises” that hopefully lead to “aha!” or “eureka!” experiences instead.

Confucius said, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. If you want to understand the golf swing you can’t do it by reading a book. You need to hit a lot of golf balls. We need more education built around doing instead of just thinking. I’ll give you a simple example. For one of my classes I told my students that their homework was a simple task. All I wanted them to do was stop by the Duke Chapel once a day and spend five minutes there. I didn’t care whether they prayed or just sat. I didn’t care when they went. Just five minutes a day, five days out of the next seven.

Week after week a bunch of kids who could knock out term papers like confetti couldn’t do it. Finally one kid exploded, “I don’t get it. I pass that damn chapel 1000 times a day. Why can’t I go in there and spend five minutes?” A girl answered very softly: “I know why I can’t do it.”

Everyone turned to her and she just sat there as tears dribbled down her cheeks. Finally she said, “I’m afraid if I do I might start thinking about all those things I’d rather not think about.” Suddenly 20 other heads bowed and we just sat together in silence. The conversation resumed on a whole new level of openness and honesty. We spent the rest of the term focusing on all those things they didn’t want to think about and the ACTION or “doing” these things implied. This action or doing is what I mean by a “moral” component.

As Father Christian said in my essay Brother John, “Remember this. All philosophical problems are at heart moral problems. It all comes down to how you intend to live your life.”

It is not what we think or feel that matters. It is how we LIVE.

I never set out to be single, and the fact that I do not have a family is the closest thing I have to a regret. I actually came close a couple of times, and in the final analysis I think it is just the way things turned out. Thanks for your question. It is a good one. But whatever you do never fall into the trap of blaming your family. Family is a wonderful thing and it breaks my heart when people turn a miracle into an excuse.

August Turak