Stanley Scism

I don’t go to class reunions.  Haven’t yet, anyway, mainly due to inconvenience—I studied in many places and when my classmates hold a reunion in the States, by the time I get the information, given the way I travel, something else is always scheduled.  Another reason for not going is that manly resolution is sicklied over by the pale cast of thought because other people tell me, when they’ve attended class reunions, that they and their classmates have less in common than they’d had years ago in school.

                Still, I’ll probably go someday.  We need to keep on tap equanimity and magnanimity so that, even if someone we used to taunt or clobber in school now makes more money or has a more interesting life than we do, we don’t descend into envy.  And we can balance the claims of collegial courtesy and vocational duty to take time out and attend one of these usually tiresome events out of sheer goodness of heart.  Who knows—our own sparkling personality might turn this particular reunion into a success!

                If you’re bucking the ordinary trend and thinking in advance of progressing and leading, I have some suggestions:

1.        Please note that you can sometimes progress faster than others of similar qualifications if you add to your job skills knowledge of a language or languages other applicants don’t—you can skip through many preliminaries that way.  (This factor doesn’t usually occur to Americans, since we speak one language from sea to shining sea.)  The language you select should, in my opinion, match your appearance—that way you can look like a native in the place where you work.  Are you dark-headed and olive-skinned?  Then Arabic or Hindustani or Italian or Spanish might work best.  Are you light-haired and fair-skinned?  Russian or any northern European language might be better.  This isn’t a demand—just a way of helping you find a place of work where you can also feel at home.

2.        Approach life as an Elizabethan—casually combine mental and physical activities, sport and music and scholarship and spiritual progress.  Move back and forth between cerebration and liveliness.

3.        Don’t be priggish, prim, full of mountainous self-importance and making parades of doing nothing when there’s really nothing doing.  People see through this boastful air of posing to be admired, this striving for effect.  Jesus talked about the Pharisees doing this.  And if people call you by your name, don’t stand on ceremony.  That’s what your name’s for.

4.        Don’t ambitiously shove your way past others—they’ll resent that and you’ll need to work with them later.  Don’t attack, and don’t strike attitudes.

5.        When job opportunities come your way, decide whether you want to make career moves that accelerate promotion, or whether you want jobs that interest you in themselves.  Ten years later, if the promotions don’t occur, will you still be able to say that you enjoyed the decade?

6.        Shoulder responsibility and work very, very hard when emergencies require.  After the crisis is over, if you’ve gone through major hardships, rest up, overcome fatigue and compensate with some minor comforts.

7.        When a situation arises in which you can’t do anything, don’t get hysterical.  Bouncing off the walls helps no one and achieves nothing.  Starting fights without a decent chance of winning is a poor game.  Be a smarter hero than that—if you later think of a practical task that might help, busy yourself therein—even some slender chances are worth taking if present high danger means you have little to lose.

8.        If you don’t habitually give way to astonished exclamation or anguished pessimism, you can face problems with more fluent detachment.  Meanwhile, if someone else in time of crisis starts losing control of him/herself, you might have to issue a command.  It’s not necessary to discuss problems speculatively all the time.  Without talk, you can face facts frankly.  And you can’t plan for every contingency.  When you can’t, just watch events and play by ear.

9.        Life has many pleasant prospects and attractive visions—disappointment comes if you want daily sighs of delight and hourly stirrings of soul.  “Godliness with contentment is great gain.”

10.     Unfortunately, when things go wrong, the person who gets blamed often doesn’t deserve the blame.  Try to see more than one side to each question.

11.      Distinguish between heroism and burnout.  Don’t tempt death and danger for their own sakes.  Decline valorous impossibilities.  Yet willingly solve problems and develop endurance.  You can have enormous distaste for trouble you see coming, yet calmly and clearly command through the situation.

12.     Consider people’s consolation and comfort.  Some people are distraught and nerve-wracked, and that may wrack your nerves sometimes, but remember you’re not alone.  Some people you lead can help calm, comfort and console others while you tackle the parts of the problem that you best can solve.

13.     And when there are parts of the problem that someone else does better than you can, be grateful for and at peace in someone else’s superb, indisputable competence during times of uncertainty.  Enjoy someone else’s skill instead of always being tied in anxious knots.

14.     If you enjoy quietness, contemplation and solitude, you’ll have time to think.

15.     If something’s due to the lunacy of man, don’t blame it on the will of God.

16.     If the people you lead don’t cause trouble for you, thank God for that.  Not all leaders are so lucky.  In life, you’ll have to deal with enough intransigent, truculent, disgruntled, irascible, derisive, bitter, contemptuous people.  Don’t create more.

17.     A sense of humor helps.  “A happy heart is good medicine.”  It’s hard to make jokes about something and a fuss about it at the same time.  Laugh.

18.     Gentleness is part of civilization.  Delicate fragrances, admirable proportions, subtle harmonies that gratify rather than terrify, modest and impeccable taste, approaching important discussions gradually, measured stateliness.  For instance, the elegant Chinese tea-drinking ceremony, wherein almost colorless liquid of slender, elusive, recondite savor is placed in little eggshell bowls on a lacquered tray.  Taste it very slowly.  Introduce yourself gradually into regions of delight.  Be thankful that culture takes off rough edges from life.  Respond to courtesy.

19.     Cultural sensitivity.  Not everyone has the same background.  For instance, Orientals enjoy the ritual of meeting and like to take their time over it.  In such a case you would bow with due, stylized courtesy, and introductions would come first.  There’s time for somber, dignified deliberation, for urbane, social formalities, and, unfortunately, for shrill, barracks-square acerbity.  And if you think people of other cultures delay in getting things done, consider that maybe they think you charge around feverishly.  As one Sun Yat-sen said, when the Oriental appears inscrutable, it is perhaps more often the case that the Occidental has been insensitive.

20.     Art of different nations can also reflect how some of their people think.  For instance, Chinese art includes exquisite pearl-blue Sung ceramics, lacquers in cold, orchestrated, lovely detail—refinement lingering in porcelain and varnish, creating in you a moment of emotion that dissolves into thought.  Delicate perfection and miniature precision have their attractions in a world growing ever bigger, bolder and noisier.  Another Oriental example:  a Chinese lotus garden might have leaves set so close in the pool that they look like moist green tiles.  Fringing the pool, the brass menagerie of lions, unicorns and dragons in their stylized ferocity emphasize the surrounding peace, and the designer proportions the whole piece so well that your eye doesn’t rush around madly from one part to another.  Meanwhile, silvery harpsichord airs by Rameau from eighteenth century France, or Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, or Chopin, would match perfectly the Oriental art I’ve described.  Add the smell of tuberose and the silvery moon for a perfect whole.  Human artistic sensibility you can piece together from all around the world, from human creativity and from God’s creation, into a whole that appeals to you.

21.     Here’s another art idea:  If you have the space, even your books can be housed in bays and alcoves rather than paraded on shelves—give an impression of wisdom and good manners rather than somber ostentation.

22.     Travel.  After you’ve seen a lot of places, you can more readily judge what’s really valuable to see.  For instance, I write this from Nagarkot, Nepal, where I can see 200 miles of snowcapped mountains from Annapurna to Everest.  And recently I was in Shimla, mentioned so frequently by Kipling, but no longer the same at all.  I hope to visit Manali and Dalhousie, where I’ve never been before, as well as Kashmir, where I’ve been once, and, when political events permit, Bhutan, Tibet and Mongolia.  Not just to see them, but to extend God’s kingdom there.  I’d also like to see Angor Wat, Bali, Australia, New Zealand and many Pacific Islands, Kenya, Lake Victoria, Victoria Falls, Karnak and other Egyptian sights on the Nile, Petra and Damascus and Tripoli and Crete and Turkey and the Black Sea—Constantinople and Troy and much of Europe from Romania to Iceland.  In Latin America there would be Andean, Mayan, Toltec and Aztec civilizations.  Then there’s home—the NW USA.  These are my travel loves and dreams.  Have your own.

23.     Moderation:  avoid excess.  Being a teetotaler on one hand, while a glutton on the other, makes little sense.  As you lead others, be moderately strict (to govern well, don’t govern too much) and expect moderate obedience.  In regard to your own behavior, you can be more of a fanatic—and heretic.  Your fixed rules should be moderately fixed—exceptions might well arise.  About your conclusions, be moderately certain.  In your life, have a moderately good time.  A moderate number of rigid inexorabilities.  In decision-making, be guided some by the example of the past, some by present wisdom, some by clear eyes of prayer regarding the future.

24.     If people misunderstand your motivations, but like you, don’t spoil their illusion immediately and thus destroy their friendship.  Let them find out on their own time by themselves—give them the thrill of discovery.  As I used to tell my mom, “Don’t tell us how bad everything is at the beginning of the meal.  Give us the chance to find out for ourselves.”  Meanwhile, they can develop other reasons for liking you as they come to know you better.

25.     Patience.  Just because you live in the moment doesn’t mean that you have to think only in the moment.  Few things really important happened last year that couldn’t have been predicted ten years ago or won’t be better understood ten years from now.  As well as broadening your perspective culturally, which I mentioned above, also lengthen it chronologically.  Reading history helps.  Perhaps you’ll learn that avoiding hurry doesn’t imply unwillingness.

26.     Confidentiality.  Keeping confidences may be awkward at times, but probably less so than if you had told them.

27.     When love comes, a permissible response is charming appreciation of the compliment given, and a friendship that grows more precious with the years.  It is possible to spare people the satiety that goes with absolute attainment.  Instead of, as Shakespeare says of Cleopatra, “she makes hungry where she most satisfies,” you might remove hunger where you least satisfy, and in the long run accomplish more by calming the throb of desire to a murmur where the embers glow, but don’t burn.  Whatever you do, don’t think of a beautiful girl as an attainment or acquisition—in that ugly phrase, “a trophy wife.”  Think of her instead as a rainbow reflected in a glass bowl, or as dewdrops on the blossom of a fruit tree?  More graceful, yes?  And just as true.

            Why twenty-seven suggestions?  Because I couldn’t think of twenty-eight.  Right now, anyway.  And I wanted you to have these.

                Will I change some?  Add some?  Subtract some?  I’m moderately sure I will, after thinking more about it, patiently and harmoniously reflecting, with all due gravity and dignity.