MINI-SEMINAR SESSION READINGS FRIDAY, AUGUST 1 “WHY NOT?” TABLE OF CONTENTS (TOUCH PAGE NUMBER TO JUMP TO READING ON TABLET) Page 1 “The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself Today” by Mark Manson Page 4 “Ted Kennedy’s Eulogy of Brother Bobby Kennedy” by Senator Ted Kennedy The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself Today Mark Manson The Huffington Post February 5, 2014 Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a care-free, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room. 5 Everybody wants that -- it's easy to want that. If I ask you, "What do you want out of life?" and you say something like, "I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like," it's so ubiquitous that it doesn't even mean anything. Everyone wants that. So what's the point? 10 What's more interesting to me is what pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives end up. 15 Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence -- but not everyone is willing to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, with the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth. 20 Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship -- but not everyone is willing to go through the tough communication, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They settle and wonder "What if?" for years and years and until the question morphs from "What if?" into "What for?" And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, "What was it all for?" If not for their lowered standards and expectations for themselves 20 years prior, then what for? Because happiness requires struggle. You can only avoid pain for so long before it comes roaring back to life. 25 30 At the core of all human behavior, the good feelings we all want are more or less the same. Therefore what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we're willing to sustain. "Nothing good in life comes easy," we've been told that a hundred times before. The good things in life we accomplish are defined by where we enjoy the suffering, where we enjoy the struggle. People want an amazing physique. But you don't end up with one unless you legitimately love the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless 1 you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions. 5 10 People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don't end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to love the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether will be successful or not. Some people are wired for that sort of pain, and those are the ones who succeed. People want a boyfriend or girlfriend. But you don't end up attracting amazing people without loving the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It's part of the game of love. You can't win if you don't play. What determines your success is "What pain do you want to sustain?" 15 20 I wrote in an article last week that I've always loved the idea of being a surfer, yet I've never made consistent effort to surf regularly. Truth is: I don't enjoy the pain that comes with paddling until my arms go numb and having water shot up my nose repeatedly. It's not for me. The cost outweighs the benefit. And that's fine. On the other hand, I am willing to live out of a suitcase for months on end, to stammer around in a foreign language for hours with people who speak no English to try and buy a cell phone, to get lost in new cities over and over and over again. Because that's the sort of pain and stress I enjoy sustaining. That's where my passion lies, not just in the pleasures, but in the stress and pain. There's a lot of self development advice out there that says, "You've just got to want it enough!" 25 30 That's only partly true. Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something badly enough. They just aren't being honest with themselves about what they actually want that bad. If you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the six pack, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off a person or ten. If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe you don't actually want it at all. So I ask you, "How are you willing to suffer?" 35 Because you have to choose something. You can't have a pain-free life. It can't all be roses and unicorns. Choose how you are willing to suffer. Because that's the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have the same answer. 2 The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain? Because that answer will actually get you somewhere. It's the question that can change your life. It's what makes me me and you you. It's what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together. 5 So what's it going to be? About the Author Mark Manson (1984- ) is a bestselling author and entrepreneur who writes social commentary about the psychology of modern life and culture. 3 Ted T Ken nnedy's Eulogy of Brotther Bob bby Ken nnedy Senato or Ted Kenne edy St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New w York City Ju une 8, 1968 cies, Mr. President: Your Eminences, Your Excellenc On behalf of Mrs. Ke ennedy, her children, the e parents an nd sisters of Robert Ken nnedy, I wan nt to express what w we fee el to those who w mourn with w us toda ay in this Catthedral and around the world. 5 10 We loved d him as a brother, b and as a father, and as a so on. From his parents, and from his o older brothers and sisters -- Joe and Kathleen K and Jack -- he e received an n inspiration n which he passed on o to all of us. He gave us u strength in time of trrouble, wisdom in time o of uncertain nty, and sharing in time of o happiness s. He will alw ways be by o our side. Love is not n an easy feeling f to pu ut into word ds. Nor is loy yalty, or trusst, or joy. Bu ut he was all of these. He e loved life completely c and a he lived d it intensely y. A few ye ears back, Ro obert Kenne edy wrote so ome words about his ow wn father which expresses [sic] the way we in his h family felt about him m. He said off what his father meant to him, and I quote: 15 "What it really all ad dds up to is love -- not lo ove as it is d described w with such fac cility in popu ular magazines, but the kind k of love that is affec ction and resspect, orderr and encouragement, a and support. Our awaren ness of this was w an incallculable sou rce of strength, and because real lo ove is something unselfis sh and involves sacrifice e and giving g, we could not help butt profit from m it." And he continued, c 20 "Beneath h it all, he ha as tried to en ngender a social consci ence. There e were wrongs which needed attention. a Th here were people who were w poor a nd needed help. And w we have a 4 responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off." 5 10 15 20 25 30 That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did, and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now: "There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress. It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal." 40 These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. 45 Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe. 35 5 5 10 15 For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event. *The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.* Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live." That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us. 20 My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 25 "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not." About the Author Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy (1932-2009) served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts for 47 years and was a member of the Democratic Party. He was the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. 6