A Question of Balance

William James,
American Philosopher, Historian, Psychologist

I am overcome with the beginning of William James' speech, "Is Life Worth Living?" (Ethical Addresses, 12th Series, 1905, pp. 1-29).  I hadn't half begun reading it when I had to stop and absorb all that he had thrown at me (and initially at the Young Men's Christian Association at Harvard, c. 1895) in the introduction.  

James began with Walt Whitman's ebullient praise of life, which, of course, lifted me up; then he took me down to the depths of despair with a long excerpt from James Thomson's poem:  "The City of Dreadful Night."  Two pages worth of an excerpt, with this snippet of doom and gloom:

My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus : 

This life holds nothing good for us,

But it ends soon and nevermore can be; 

And we knew nothing of it ere our birth. 

And shall know nothing when consigned to earth ;

I ponder these thoughts and they comfort me.

And then he called us back to reality, more or less, with another excerpt from an unidentified source quoting [John] Ruskin, to remind us that joy and misery yet live side by side though one be out of the sight of the other.

And, with that, I had to pause and reflect.  The emotional rollercoaster created by these references took me from high to low to a stricken realization that at no time might we be wholly comfortable in our own lives, knowing that others are themselves suffering and miserable.  What to think?

Sometimes, yes, life is so wonderful we can hardly believe that we have been privileged to experience such moments as come to us with delight and wonder and sheer pleasure.  I can remember the day I was waiting for a Senate Committee hearing to begin, intending to testify in support of some bill or other, thinking:  "I can't believe they pay me to do this."  I can remember the peace and comfort of just leaning sideways slightly to touch my late husband's shoulder and feel the solid support of his presence.  I can remember standing on the back porch of my rented home as a student in Seattle, seeing Mt. Rainer, with sunlight gleaming on its snowy top--all that beauty practically for free!  I can sit here now, in a not wholly lit room, no views to speak of, just a keyboard and monitor to face me--and remember many such moments, delighted at having been given the chance to experience them, delighted still to have the ability to remember them.  (Memory is nothing to take for granted!)

But, yes, there are moments in life where we can hardly stand to bear what we must suffer now and, sometimes, forever.  The loss of loved ones will eventually come to all of us.  I sit here, with my husband's loving glance captured in a long ago picture, knowing that I will never see those eyes looking at me again.  The pain of walking from one room to another, sometimes worse, sometimes better, always a reminder of limitations, keeps me indoors and away from direct social contact--which even an introvert will eventually miss.  The careless insults and assaults that others may fling in my direction, seeking, perhaps to awaken my awareness, not realizing the deep wounds that they re-open.  My woes are few, but sometimes they loom large.  I can find myself descending into the Slough of Despond before I realize what's happening, if I don't carefully pull myself back from the abyss.  Still, rarely, but painfully, I sometimes find myself questioning whether my life is worth continuing.

It is, however, the last of James' three quotations that strikes me the hardest.  I cannot regret my happy memories; I have learned to back away from the abyss.  But how do we live in any comfort or ease, knowing that around us people are suffering?  These walls shut me in.  Now, however, I am reminded that on the other side a good neighbor has recently suffered a stroke.  A young couple have taken in their flags and signs, any indication of their non-binary identity, being now forced to hide who they are out of fear.  Farther away, I am told, young students are facing their own struggles to find their way forward in a society that pushes them in unhealthy and unsafe directions.  And we know that poverty and disease and violence and abuse and the whole litany of horrors that humans can manage to inflict upon humans (and non-humans and the planet itself) continue.  Once we become aware--awakened, if you will--how do we survive the onslaught?

James' address to the YMCA was about suicide--and how to avoid it.  I'm not sure that I am fully aligned with his answer (religious experience will give you a reason to live), so I will have to spend more time with James' work and ideas to see why it so appealed to the editors of Ethical Addresses when they republished it 10 years after it was first delivered.  In spending that time, I am not likely to be seeking an answer to the question at the heart of his essay:  Is life worth living?  (Hell to the yes, it is.  And I'm loving the living of it, aches, pains, stress, and all.)

The question, however, that is going to stalk me for quite a while is the one that struck me so hard in reading James' introduction and is, after all, the key question that faces us in Ethical Culture.  Not "is life worth living?" but "how can we balance our need to grow and change within ourselves against the need to help the world around us develop and change?"  We seek to become better human beings, better family members, better neighbors.  We also feel pulled to help relieve the suffering we see in the world, to help others find better ways to be human.  Do we have to choose between these needs?  Or can we do both?  What is the balance?

I take this issue as a "key question," because I feel that there is an ongoing tug of war ideas within the Ethical Culture Movement right now:  Should we focus our efforts on our individual inner development and not on Ethical Action that focuses on serving the broader community external to our Ethical Culture Societies?   Should we focus on our service to the planet and its inhabitants, or should we tend first to our own need for development as Ethical humans?  Frankly, I think Felix Adler answered that question both ways in the past, and I'm not sure how other Leaders have treated the issue since those early answers.  Perhaps that is why we continue to hear passionate statements like this:  "Ethical Culture Societies, not the AEU, should engage in Ethical Actions!"  "You can't do any Ethical Actions until you have worked on your own attitudes and beliefs!"  "The AEU needs to develop national Ethical Actions that Societies can participate in!"  And on and on, back and forth, with no particular forum or venue in which to seek consensus.

Perhaps it is time to have that discussion.  In the meantime, we must agonize within ourselves, knowing that others suffer, knowing that we can (try to) help, but that we also need to maintain a commitment to ourselves and our intellectual and emotional development as Ethical Humans.  How to do that remains the question, I think.