I love the twentieth-century architect, Louis Kahn, who
brought together in his architecture both the clear lines and geometry of
Modernism with the monumentality of ancient buildings. He brought the past into
the future in extraordinary ways. His life has lessons for us. In the midst of
incredible adversity and bad choices of his own, he continued to create. He
maintained confidence in himself and resilience in the face of extreme
difficulty. Kahn once said, "how accidental our lives are
really, and how filled with influence by circumstance." It will only be
the force of our character that will keep us from surrendering to circumstance.
We all know that life can be
difficult. Our existence as human beings is fraught with unknowns,
contingencies, vulnerabilities, and the absurdities of good and bad luck. Each
day we experience a mixture of gain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and
pain, acceptance and rejection, but the uncertainty of it all often brings
about feelings of doubt and fear. Add to these experiences, our bad habit of
measuring our own success and failure by comparing ourselves to others, and the
result is most of us are constantly fighting the anxiety that we are not good
enough, that we are inadequate. This fear and anxiety about our own
inadequacies distorts our relationships with others; makes us feel alienated
from our communities; and can give us a sense of insecurity in our world.
Given the existential state of
our human condition, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a constant companion who was
a person of great self-confidence, so he or she could help us remain calm in
the face of adversity? Wouldn’t it be great if our constant companion were a
person of strong emotional resilience, so he or she could help us cultivate
positive feelings and thoughts regardless of the external circumstances we
found ourselves in? Wouldn’t it be nice if our constant companion were a person
of love, so he or she could help us be kind, forgiving, and patient both with
ourselves and others we encountered each day? If our constant companion were
self-confident, emotionally resilient, and loving, then I imagine he or she
would also be joyful and cheerful and so could help us experience happiness
each day.
Of course, we do in fact have a
constant companion. It is we, ourselves. We are that person whom we are with
24/7. We can never escape ourself. Wherever we go, there we are. We can never
leave ourself, depart from ourself, but are for an entire lifetime welded to ourself.
What kind of a person are we? Are we a person of great self-confidence? Of
Emotional resilience? Of Love? Of happiness? Do we possess the character of the
person whom we’d want to be with 24/7? Would we like to become that person – a
person of confidence, resilience, love, and joy? We can’t control the
character, or even the behavior of the people around us, but we can control our
behavior. We can choose our character. We can determine who we will be.
The Greek philosopher, Socrates,
taught that living together with others begins with living together with ourself.
Only the person, who is able to live happily with him or herself, is able to
live happily with others. We need to learn how to care. To care is to cultivate with love. To care
is to nurture and grow what is already present in ourself, in our relationships
to others, in our presence in community, and in how we dwell upon the earth. Think
of a beautiful garden overrun with weeds; you cultivate it by removing what isn’t
garden! Michelangelo was once asked how he could carve such a beautiful and
life-like statue of David from a block of marble. He reportedly said it was
easy. He simply saw the figure in the marble and then removed what wasn’t
David. We already possess within ourself the confidence, emotional resilience,
and love in order to experience joy in each moment of our life. We just need to
cultivate it. We need to remove what isn't us. We need to recover our true
identify.
There is a fable that tells of a
very hungry and very pregnant tigress who pounces upon a flock of goats with
such ferocity that she causes her own death and the birth of a baby tiger. When
the goats see the dead tigress and the baby tiger, their maternal instincts
kick in, and they adopt the baby tiger and raise it as one of their own, a
goat. The tiger grows up believing it is a goat. It learns to talk like a goat,
to eat like a goat, to act like a goat, but even then it doesn’t make a very
good goat. One day, after the tiger has become a miserable goat, another, older
tiger comes hunting the goats. The older tiger springs upon the goats, and they
scatter in fear, but the young tiger just stands there and bleats like a goat.
The older tiger stares at the
younger tiger in amazement and ask, “Why are you living here with these goats?”
To which the young tiger just bleats, “Maaaaa.” The older tiger roars at him,
but he just responds with goatish sounds and returns to his goat behavior
eating grass. So the older tiger takes him and leads him to a still pond. The
younger tiger looks into the pond and sees his own face. For the very first
time, he sees himself for what he truly is, a tiger, not a goat. The older
tiger puts his own face next to the younger tiger. “You see,” he says, “You’ve
got a face like mine.” “You are not a goat.” “You are a tiger like me.” “Now go
and be a tiger!”
I love this fable. It seems that
I often live like a goat; I think like a goat, I talk like a goat, eat like a
goat, and behave like a goat. That is to say, I often live a life less than
fully human, less than my full potential as a human being. I imagine you’re
probably a lot like me. It is time we see one another and ourselves as we truly
are and as we can become. It is time to become who we really are. We each need
the tiger experience.
