2024-08-14_Advice_for_a_Happy_Life_by_Charles_Murray
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00:00:30.240 | Advice for a Happy Life by Charles Murray
00:00:33.280 | The transition from college to adult life is treacherous,
00:00:37.040 | and this is nowhere more visible than among new college graduates in their first real jobs.
00:00:43.280 | A few years ago, I took it upon myself to start writing tips for the young staff where I work
00:00:48.240 | about how to avoid doing things that would make their supervisors write them off.
00:00:53.520 | It began as a lark as I wrote tips with titles such as "Excise the word 'like' from your spoken
00:00:59.680 | English." But eventually, I found myself getting into the deeper waters of how to go about living
00:01:05.760 | a good life. At that point, I had to deal with a reality. When it comes to a life filled with
00:01:12.960 | deep and lasting satisfactions, most of the cliches are true. How could I make them sound
00:01:19.520 | fresh to a new generation? Here's how I tried. 1. Consider Marrying Young
00:01:27.600 | The age of marriage for college graduates has been increasing for decades,
00:01:32.560 | and this cultural shift has been a good thing. Many 22-year-olds are saved from bad marriages
00:01:38.960 | because they go into relationships at that age assuming that marriage is still out of the
00:01:42.560 | question. But should you assume that marriage is still out of the question when you're 25? 27?
00:01:49.200 | I'm not suggesting that you decide ahead of time that you will get married in your 20s.
00:01:54.400 | You've got to wait until the right person comes along. I'm just pointing out that you shouldn't
00:01:59.040 | exclude the possibility. If you wait until your 30s, your marriage is likely to be a merger.
00:02:05.360 | If you get married in your 20s, it is likely to be a startup.
00:02:10.800 | Merger marriages are what you tend to see on the weddings pages of the Sunday New York Times.
00:02:15.680 | Highly educated couples in their 30s, both people well on their way to success.
00:02:19.520 | Lots of things can be said in favor of merger marriages. The bride and groom may be more mature,
00:02:26.800 | less likely to outgrow each other, or to feel impelled 10 years into the marriage
00:02:33.280 | to make up for their lost youth. But let me put in a word for startup marriages,
00:02:39.280 | in which the success of the partners isn't yet assured. The groom with his new architecture
00:02:45.280 | degree is still designing stairwells, and the bride is starting her third year of medical school.
00:02:50.480 | Their income doesn't leave them impoverished, but they have to watch every penny.
00:02:55.520 | What are the advantages of a startup marriage? For one thing, you will both have memories of
00:03:02.080 | your life together when it was all still up in the air. You'll have fun remembering the years
00:03:07.520 | when you went from being scared newcomers to the point at which you realized you were going to make
00:03:12.880 | it. Even more important, you and your spouse will have made your way together. Whatever happens,
00:03:20.480 | you will have shared the experience, and each of you will know that you wouldn't have become
00:03:25.200 | the person you are without the other. Many merger marriages are happy, but a certain kind of
00:03:32.400 | symbiosis, where two people become more than the sum of the individuals, is perhaps more common
00:03:38.800 | in startups. Two, learn how to recognize your soulmate. Ready for some cliches about marriage?
00:03:48.240 | Here they come, because they're true. Marry someone with similar tastes and preferences.
00:03:56.000 | Which tastes and preferences? The ones that will affect life almost every day. It is okay if you
00:04:02.640 | like the ballet and your spouse doesn't. Reasonable people can accommodate each other on such
00:04:07.360 | differences. But if you dislike each other's friends, or don't get each other's senses of humor,
00:04:13.920 | or especially if you have different ethical impulses, break it off and find someone else.
00:04:22.320 | Personal habits that you find objectionable are probably deal breakers. Jacques Barzun
00:04:28.720 | identified the top three as punctuality, orderliness, and thriftiness. It doesn't
00:04:35.280 | make any difference which point of the spectrum you're on, he observed. Some couples are very
00:04:40.080 | happy living always in debt, always being late, and finding leftover pizza under a sofa cushion.
00:04:46.400 | You just have to be at the same point on the spectrum. Intractable differences will become,
00:04:51.920 | over time, a fingernail dragged across the blackboard of a marriage.
00:04:56.080 | What you see is what you're going to get. If something about your prospective spouse bothers
00:05:02.720 | you, but you think you can change your beloved after you're married, you're wrong. Be prepared
00:05:09.280 | to live with whatever bothers you, or forget it. Your spouse will undoubtedly change during a long
00:05:15.920 | marriage, but not in ways you can predict or control. It is absolutely crucial that you really,
00:05:24.880 | really like your spouse. You hear it all the time from people who are in great marriages,
00:05:31.200 | "I'm married to my best friend." They are being literal. A good working definition of "soulmate"
00:05:39.360 | is "your closest friend to whom you are also sexually attracted." Here are two things to worry
00:05:45.920 | about as you look for that person. Do you sometimes pick at each other's sore spots?
00:05:51.120 | You like the same things, have fun together, the sex is great, but one of you is controlling or
00:05:56.480 | nags the other, or won't let a difference of opinion go or knowingly says things that will
00:06:00.800 | hurt you? Break it off. Another cause for worry is the grand passion. You know a relationship is a
00:06:10.160 | grand passion if you find yourself behaving like an adolescent long after adolescence has passed.
00:06:17.040 | You are obsessed and more than a little crazy. Not to worry. Everyone should experience at least
00:06:23.520 | one grand passion. Just don't act on it while the storm is raging. A good marriage is the best thing
00:06:32.160 | that can ever happen to you. Above all else, realize that this cliché is true. The downside
00:06:40.400 | risks of marrying, and they are real, are nothing compared with what you will gain from a good one.
00:06:48.240 | 3. Eventually stop fretting about fame and fortune. One of my assumptions about you
00:06:56.000 | is that you are ambitious, meaning that you hope to become famous, rich, or both,
00:07:03.440 | and intend to devote intense energy over the next few decades to pursuing those dreams.
00:07:08.800 | That is as it should be. I look with suspicion on any talented 20-something who doesn't feel that
00:07:17.040 | way. I wish you luck. But suppose you arrive at age 40 and you enjoy your work, have found your
00:07:25.280 | soulmate, are raising a couple of terrific kids, and recognize that you will probably never become
00:07:31.280 | either rich or famous. At that point, it is important to supplement your youthful ambition
00:07:37.440 | with mature understanding. Years ago, I was watching a television profile of David Geffen,
00:07:44.080 | the billionaire music and film producer. At some point, he said, "Show me someone who
00:07:50.000 | thinks that money buys happiness, and I'll show you someone who has never had a lot of money."
00:07:55.600 | The remark was accompanied by an ineffably sad smile on Mr. Geffen's face, which said that
00:08:04.800 | he had been there, done that, and knew what he was talking about. The whole vignette struck me
00:08:11.680 | in a way that "money can't buy happiness" never had, and my visceral reaction was reinforced by
00:08:19.520 | one especially memorable shot during the profile, taken down the length of Mr. Geffen's private jet
00:08:25.920 | along the rows of empty leather seats and sofas, to where he sat all alone in the rear.
00:08:34.400 | The problem that you face in your 20s and 30s is that you are gnawed by anxiety that you won't be
00:08:41.360 | a big success. It is an inevitable side effect of ambition. My little story about David Geffen
00:08:48.560 | won't help. Now, pull it out again in 20 years. Fame and wealth do accomplish something.
00:08:56.080 | They cure ambition anxiety. But that's all. It isn't much.
00:09:02.480 | 4. Take religion seriously. Don't bother to read this one if you're already satisfyingly
00:09:10.720 | engaged with a religious tradition. Now that we're alone, here's where a lot of you stand
00:09:16.320 | when it comes to religion. It isn't for you. You don't mind if other people are devout,
00:09:21.920 | but you don't get it. Smart people don't believe that stuff anymore.
00:09:26.000 | I can be sure that is what many of you think because your generation of high-IQ,
00:09:32.320 | college-educated young people, like mine 50 years ago, has been as thoroughly socialized
00:09:38.320 | to be secular as your counterparts in preceding generations were socialized to be devout.
00:09:44.000 | Some of you grew up with parents who weren't religious and you've never given religion a
00:09:48.640 | thought. Others of you followed the religion of your parents as children but left religion behind
00:09:53.600 | as you were socialized by college. By socialized, I don't mean that you studied theology under
00:10:00.240 | professors who persuaded you that Thomas Aquinas was wrong. You didn't study theology at all.
00:10:06.400 | None of the professors you admired were religious. When the topic of religion came up,
00:10:10.800 | they treated it dismissively or as a subject of humor. You went along with the zeitgeist.
00:10:16.400 | I am describing my own religious life from the time I went to Harvard until my late 40s. At that
00:10:23.280 | point, my wife, prompted by the birth of our first child, had found a religious tradition in which
00:10:28.000 | she was comfortable, Quakerism, and had been attending Quaker meetings for several years.
00:10:34.240 | I began keeping her company and started reading on religion. I still describe myself as an agnostic,
00:10:41.680 | but my unbelief is getting shaky. Taking religion seriously means work. If you're waiting for a
00:10:50.400 | road to Damascus experience, you're kidding yourself. Getting inside the wisdom of the
00:10:55.040 | great religions doesn't happen by sitting on beaches, watching sunsets, and waiting for
00:11:00.320 | enlightenment. It can easily require as much intellectual effort as a law degree.
00:11:05.040 | Even dabbling at the edges has demonstrated to me the depths of Judaism, Buddhism, and Daoism.
00:11:12.800 | I assumed that I would find similar depths in Islam and Hinduism as well.
00:11:17.120 | I certainly have developed a far greater appreciation for Christianity,
00:11:21.680 | the tradition with which I am most familiar. The Sunday school stories I learned as a child
00:11:26.800 | bear no resemblance to Christianity taken seriously. You've got to grapple with the
00:11:32.400 | real thing. Start by jarring yourself out of unreflective atheism or agnosticism.
00:11:39.840 | A good way to do that is to read about contemporary cosmology.
00:11:44.400 | The universe isn't only stranger than we knew. It is stranger and vastly more unlikely than we
00:11:52.160 | could have imagined, and we aren't even close to discovering its last mysteries.
00:11:57.280 | That reading won't lead you to religion, but it may stop you from being unreflective.
00:12:04.480 | Find ways to put yourself around people who are profoundly religious.
00:12:09.600 | You will encounter individuals whose intelligence, judgment, and critical faculties
00:12:16.240 | are as impressive as those of your smartest atheist friends, and who also possess a
00:12:22.720 | disquieting confidence in an underlying reality behind the many religious dogmas.
00:12:28.560 | They have learned to reconcile faith and reason, yes, but beyond that, they persuasively convey
00:12:37.120 | ways of knowing that transcend intellectual understanding. They exhibit in their own
00:12:42.880 | personae a kind of wisdom that goes beyond just having intelligence and good judgment.
00:12:49.200 | Start reading religious literature. You don't have to go back to Aquinas,
00:12:54.960 | though that wouldn't be a bad idea. The past hundred years have produced excellent and
00:13:00.240 | accessible work, much of it written by people who came to adulthood as uninvolved in religion as you
00:13:06.560 | are. Watch Groundhog Day repeatedly. The movie Groundhog Day was made more than two decades ago,
00:13:15.440 | but it is still smart and funny. It is also a brilliant moral fable that deals with the most
00:13:21.520 | fundamental issues of virtue and happiness, done with such subtlety that you really need to watch
00:13:27.760 | it several times. An egocentric TV weatherman, played by Bill Murray, is sent to Punxsutawney,
00:13:34.960 | Pennsylvania to cover Groundhog Day. He hates the assignment, disdains the town and its people,
00:13:42.560 | and can't wait to get back to Pittsburgh. But a snowstorm strikes, he's stuck in Punxsutawney,
00:13:50.320 | and when he wakes up the next morning, it is Groundhog Day again. And again. And again.
00:13:59.040 | And again. The director and co-writer, Harold Ramis, whose death last month was mourned by
00:14:05.520 | his many fans, estimated that the movie has to represent at least 30 or 40 years worth of days.
00:14:12.560 | We see only a few dozen of them, ending when Bill Murray's character has discovered the secrets of
00:14:18.560 | human happiness. Without the slightest bit of preaching, the movie shows the bumpy, unplanned
00:14:26.320 | evolution of his protagonist from a jerk to a fully realized human being. A person who has
00:14:33.680 | learned to experience deep, lasting, and justified satisfaction with life, even though he has only
00:14:41.040 | one day to work with. You could learn the same truths by studying Aristotle's ethics carefully,
00:14:48.240 | but watching Groundhog Day repeatedly is a lot more fun.
00:14:53.680 | The essay you have just heard was written by Charles Murray, published in the Wall Street
00:14:57.680 | Journal in 2014. The ending note on the essay. This essay is adapted from Mr. Murray's new book,
00:15:04.320 | The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead, Do's and Don'ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking,
00:15:09.040 | Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life, which will be published April 8th by Random House.
00:15:14.640 | He is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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