“told me love was too plebeian”
Those words from Ella Fitzgerald’s song Cry Me A River get at ideas that have been swishing around in my head for a few months. Is love really too plebeian?
I remember an instance when a dear friend of mine sounded distinctly like he was in love. I said, on hearing him speak of it, “Wow, I’ve never heard you sound so giddy!” He quickly admitted that he was indeed feeling giddy. Then there was a pregnant pause after which he came back with “Ah, that’s so embarrassing!” I asked why ever would he feel more embarrassed than pleased, to which he said with his characteristic half-joking half-serious charm, “Oh, because. Because love is sooo bourgeois!” 
More recently, I hung out with people in Bombay after many years. These are folks in their late 30s and early 40s, most of whom are married, some single, others divorced. The unanimity of their attitude towards romance in marriages startled me. Their jargon revealed a certain irreverence towards love and it was a rude surprise. How openly they stated that men and women were not really designed to live together! They spoke nonchalantly of how monogamy is unnatural and how marriage is something they would advise only if and when kids are involved. I detected an odd acceptance of extramarital liaisons and I realized that phrases like ‘fuck buddy’ have migrated and are proliferating in the East – not just in the upper crust but in the middle class as well.
When I challenged their stance, they said “But it is like this in the West. Why are you so surprised? You are being a tad naive. Surely you have lived in the States for long enough to realize that romance and marriage are incompatible! It’s all an illusion.” To that my response is: I agree that marriages are often not held as sacrosanct in the West either. But the brazenness about these issues seems to be greater in Bombay (where I was born and lived till my early 20s) and in Dubai (where I’ve been for a year now) than in the US (where I spent close to a decade)!
What exactly, I keep wondering, is going on? Yes, we all know that virtually 50% of marriages in many a cosmopolitan city end in divorce. Still, I am continually alarmed at the explicitness of (what I find to be) the cynicism. And I don’t consider myself a prude of any sort!
Perhaps it is because I have not been married before, and that I’m in my early 30s, but I still hold an idealized image of it in my mind. Or perhaps I have been swept away by the Hallmark-and-Hollywood fantasy of love over the years. Or even more likely is the fact that people who trivialize love are merely all talk; maybe it is a defense to preempt getting hurt by love? Whatever the reasons, the truth is, I sense a disregard towards the concept of happily growing old with one someone – and that shakes the foundation of what I (want to) believe vitality is all about.
That said, I am glad that people are talking about these things. It’s SO much better than sweeping such stuff under the carpet. But it brings up more questions than answers for me on further introspection. Like is love merely a pedestrian idea that we, as a society, propagate to facilitate couples getting together? And does love really have nothing to do with people staying together? Is romance slowly but surely devolving in to a relic of the past? Is it truly unsustainable?
the good life
Anyone who has visited this blog more than a couple of times may have sensed my tremendous reverence for Sir Ken Robinson’s speech at the TED 2006 conference in California. A few months ago, JK Rowling delivered another wonderfully inspiring speech at a graduation ceremony at Harvard. This address by the Harry Potteress, if you will, comes extremely close to evoking the resonance created in me by Robinson.
Their themes are similar in part. The overlap lies in their descriptions of how people are typically held back from finding their talents. Robinson talks of how kids are often pushed in to doing things that they are not designed to do. This detracts from their uniqueness and leads to the feeling of having failed from within – no matter how successful they may appear to be from the outside.
JK Rowling speaks of her own experience as a mother in a financially dire situation who finally found the courage required to live her life with authenticity: She said: “So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
Robinson gave the example of Gillian Lynne, now a British ballerina, who was taken to a doctor when she was still in school for being miserable at her studies. The doctor was wise enough to tell her mother that her child didn’t have ADHD but that she did have the fidgetiness of a dancer. He encouraged her mother to enroll her in a dance school. In Robinson’s words: “Gillian was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet school. She became a soloist and had a wonderful career there. She founded her own dance company. She met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She has been responsible for some of the most successful theater productions in history. She has given pleasure to millions. And she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.”
Bravo to both speakers!
Rowling took the idea a step ahead. She spoke of how getting in touch with ourselves then helps us to get in touch with others. She talked about how it enables us to use our power of imagination to empathize with those less fortunate than us. That, most beautifully, is her definition of a good life – which is what she eventually wished upon the graduating class of 2008.
I have always thought that “the good life” is not one in which you have acquired material things and been a conventional success, but one in which you have been true to yourself; it is the only way in which you can be true to others. Believe me, I know how tough it is. But I also deeply feel how vital it is, not just for our own wellbeing but also for that of those around us; for our children, our spouses, our families, our employers, our employees, our countries, our world – whether strangers or friends.
Finally, Rowling had an important point to make for the youth of ’superpower’ America – which figures in this moving excerpt from her speech.
“Amnesty International mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Hear hear! Powerful thoughts and words indeed.
sarahndipity
It is so fortunate that Palin’s mortifying performance at off-the-cuff TV interviews coincides with McCain’s waffling on the scheduled debate.
Hopefully, this is the point at which this outrageous vice-presidential nomination will swing voters to the Obama side. What was McCain’s point in nominating her again: “Look look, America, I found you someone, and a woman no less, who makes Dubya look wise…”?
I’m breathing just a bit easy about the outcome of the election now compared to then. However, I have to remind myself, there’s still time for the votes to be cast. And, bewilderingly enough, there’s still folks out there who think this way…
(Comment on CBS News Video of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric)
“So Palin’s not that great on answering questions that she’s been getting crash courses on over the last few weeks. She can’t communicate very well off the cuff. She looks stupid trying to defend her forgein policy when she doesn’t have any. I really don’t care. What I do care about is her record as a succesful governor who faced down corruption, made tough decisions, demonstrated good judgement with the information the experts around her presented her with and maintained the highest approval raiting for any governor in the state. Apparently she has a decent grasp on how to govern and serve the people. Something Obama only wishes he had. Oh wait, he’s running against McCain. Woops, two people with more credentials then he has. Didn’t see that one coming.”
I’m not superstitious but my fingers are Xed for the debates.
speak for america
I haven’t warmed up to Obama yet, even though I am for the most part fine with his politics. Even so, I resonated with Clinton even less, and was relieved when Obama was the one nominated.
I watched his speech at the Democratic National Convention a few days ago and was not as moved as some of my friends in the US. (Of course, I do not currently reside there, and maybe that partially affects how I received it.) See I thought that while he was good, his speech lacked a real power to motivate the listener. He was too composed and his demeanor was aloof. His words had integrity but lacked drama, an aspect necessary to win this election. Where did his gifted speaking skills go?
In contrast, Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention was way more dynamic. It drew the audience in with its conviction, humor, and strategy. Kudos to her speechwriters. Don’t get me wrong – it made me continually livid. (For example, when she alluded to the “fact” that even though America is still under catastrophic threat from Al Qaeda terrorists, Obama wants to read them their rights!) The same anger that I felt when I lived in the States not too long ago – at the warmongering that is condoned.
But an impassioned speech or two is imperative to swinging this election! I heard both speeches with a sinking feeling. From a persuasion perspective, I have a strong sense that it is the McCain-Palin ticket that will win this election of ambivalence.
All I can say is: PLEASE VOTE.
