Tag: courage

The Greek Ideal We Need Today

The Greeks called it aretè, a concept I’ve never forgotten since my beloved early professor, Thomas Pappas, introduced me to it.

Often translated as “virtue,” it encompasses far more—not just moral goodness, but the pursuit of excellence in every endeavor. Plato expanded the idea to include wisdom, justice, and self-control.

Aristotle, in turn, emphasized that aretè arises from reason and consistent practice. As he put it, “Moral excellence comes about by cultivating habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

Examples of aretè abound in classical literature. Take Odysseus, for example, in The Odyssey, undertaking a ten year journey to reach home, overcoming every obstacle thrown his way through intelligence, resilience, courage and leadership.

Antigone provides another example of aretè. Defying King Creon’s decree, denying her brother burial, Antigone exemplifies moral courage in defying the autocratic king.

Does aretè exist today?

Nelson Mandela comes to mind. Imprisoned for 27 years, Mandela opted for reconciliation over bitterness, unity over revenge in post-apartheid South Africa, reflecting aretè in its highest moral and political form.

Aretè isn’t reserved for just the famous; it can be seen in frontline workers, teachers, activists, and individuals who strive for excellence in their fields, steadfast in upholding ethical principles.

In all things, excellence matters, and in these tumultious times, we need areté more than ever.

—rj

Teach me….

oakTeach me to love all things, big and small; clean and dirty: the burr oak massive with age; the silent worm that threads the earth; my fellow beings, rich or poor, sung or unsung.

Teach me to be patient, learning first to forgive my own infidelities, that I may love others more.

Teach me the wisdom of the past, of hope invested in the future–but best, the gift of this new day.

Teach me to persevere up the mountain, to resist the stitch in my side that urges quitting and with it, forfeiture of the runner’s prize.

Teach me never to love anything so much that I cannot accept its loss; the inevitability of change and ending and, someday too, my own.

Teach me the right of others to discover themselves and walk a road different from my own; to listen that I may hear and not judge.

Teach me what true freedom means: to choose without the weights of culture or tradition; the courage to revoke what inhibits happiness; the right to self-knowledge and to live in accord with it; a resolve to accept the bottom line cost in living free

Teach me to discern between having and being; to know the folly of the former, the ecstasy of the latter.

Teach me courage in a world with dark valleys; boldness to speak for those who grieve, the excluded poor, oppressed minorities, women and children, and the animals too.

Teach me to love our wounded earth, to nourish it wherever I am as though it were my own garden.

–by rj

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Courage: life’s highest elegance

One who becomes agitated
sacrifices his mastery (Lao Tsu)

The astute Jane Austen wrote a book called Sense and Sensibility in the early 19th century.  By sense, Austen meant qualities like reason, good judgment, self-control; in contrast, sensibility dealt with feelings, impulsiveness, and passions.

In our own time, I would include under sense that consummate affinity some few people possess as social observer Joseph Epstein wonderfully put it for “unerringly true taste–with perfect manners, easy elegance of dress, an eye for the beautiful in nature and art, a penetrating instinct for judgment of people, and an independent spirit that accepts only those opinions learned in one’s own heart” (Snobbery:  The American Version, p. 81).

I can’t say I’ve met anyone completely encompassing this kind of daily venue of social grace, call it class, fitted seemingly for every season.  I know I’ve always wanted it, but failed miserably pursuing what often has seemed a retreating horizon.  I’d like to know the right wine; sauté like a Chelsea Hotel chef; be up-to-date on timely, important things; be fun, but not silly; empathetic; compassionate; forgiving.  And even more.

But I also ask myself how well does all this pan out when life rears up, hurling impediments across our way, suddenly, unexpectedly, as in contexts of distress or suffering.  In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway famously dubbed such raw courage that defies circumstance as “grace under pressure.”  Musing about this, my memory retrieves just now a photo I had seen somewhere, featuring a rugged Hemingway, his fingers entwined around a rose.

I saw it last night, a beautiful thing, watching on cable a handsome young man with buoyant smile, in a wheelchair, legs severed in Boston’s marathon bombing, throw the first pitch at Fenway to loud cheers, an inspiration.  So young and such transcendence!

I think this is what Hemingway meant in calling such courage grace.  For me, it’s life’s crowned jewel.  Better, its highest elegance.

Be well and do good,

rj