The Quest for a Moral Life
0812983424
David Brooks
Notes
On the first mountain you tend to be ambitious, strategic, and independent. On the second mountain you tend to be relational, intimate, and relentless…The reason transformation happens in the valley is because something that had hitherto been useful and pleasant needs to die.
People on the second mountain have made strong commitments to one or all of these four things:
- A vocation
- A spouse and family
- A philosophy or faith
- A community
…the first time he walks into a coffee shop he learns everybody’s first name and has a joke and story for them all. By his third visit he’s everybody’s old friend. By his fifth, they want him to officiate at their wedding.
Acedia is the quieting of passion. It is a lack of care. It is living a life that doesn’t arouse your strong passions and therefore instills a sluggishness of the soul, like an oven set on warm…A telos crisis is defined by the fact that people in it don’t know what their purpose is. When this happens, they become fragile.
At the moment when you are most confused about what you should do with your life, the smartest bet is to do what millions of men and women have done through history. Pick yourself up and go out alone into the wilderness…”I want to be the person that I am when I’m alone in wilderness.”
Carl Jung called a vocation “an irrational factor that destines a man to emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths…Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner man: He is called.”
When buying a house, look at eighteen houses on the market without making a decision about any of them. Then make an offer on the next home that is better than the first eighteen.
The more creative the activity is, the more structured the work routine should probably be.
She demonstrated faith by letting God be in charge. And this is a crucial lesson for anybody in the middle of any sort of intellectual or spiritual journey: Don’t try to lead or influence. Let them be led by that which is summoning them.
We are not primarily thinking creatures; we are primarily loving and desiring creatures.