Chapter 1 of "The Good and Beautiful Life" is also called The Good and Beautiful Life. In this first chapter he talks about what makes a good and beautiful life. the main "thing" you could call it, in this book is narratives or "stories" that influence and/or determine our beliefs/behavior.
One of the things that he said towards the beginning of the chapter really stuck with me: "no one seeks a dull,lifeless, boring,meaningless life. I have never met a person whose goal was to ruin his or her life"(page 19). what he's saying is that everyone is seeking happiness. every person on the planet wants to be happy. I really was struck by this, and I think it is true. no one really wants to be upset or have a miserable life. even when they do, it is often because of something they did or that happened that has made them believe they dont deserve to or shouldnt be happy. like he said, no one sets our to purposely become a ruthless businessman with no heart, or to become the kind of person who only cares about himself and no one else. they all are trying to attain happiness, to have a good and beautiful life. I like this because its not something I really thought about. its hard to wrap your mind around the concept that everyone is searching for happiness. its hard to believe that the person who kills someone is searching for happiness, or that the people that get drunk every night are searching for happiness. but the truth is that they are searching for happiness. they are just following the wrong narrative.
He opens the chapter with a story about this patient at a retirement center that he was a chaplain intern at one summer when he was in college.the patient's name was Ben,and unlike all the other people there he was not in a good mood, he didnt get visitors,etc. one day Ben asked to talk to him[the author] and they did talk, but he couldnt figure out why Ben wanted to talk to him. after many sessions, Ben finally told him. it seemed that Ben had lived a life that wasnt very good. He was a millionare but he was so busy working and chasing the dream that he didnt focus on anything else. he was married three times and all filed for divorce either because of neglectement or because of one of his affairs. his daugter refuses to talk to him. Ben said: "I suppose you could say that I ruined my life, because today I have nothing really. oh, I still have a lot of money. i still have more money than I could ever spend. but that brings me no joy.I sit here, each day, waiting to die.I have nothing but bad memories. I cared about no one in my life,and now no one cares about me.you,young man, are all i have."(page 19). I remeber reading this, and being especially struck by the last line. I dont want to end up like that. and Ben didnt either. He didnt want to end up alone, filled with regret, with no one who cared about him. like the author says, he simply followed the wrong narrative about what will bring happiness. I dont want to end up like Ben. I want to end up happy with myself, my life, how i lived and treated others. i want to end up with lots of people who care about me in my life, who are happy to know me and to be in my life. Ben followed the narrative that says that in order to be happy you must be wealthy, successful, and look out for yourself, put yourself first. it didnt work for Ben, and going by all the messed up celebrities, it doesnt work at all.
however, something that struck me while reading this chapter was that it wasnt the success itself that led Ben to where he was, but how he chose to live his life. towards the end of the chapter, smith tells us about another person, who like Ben was in his late years and had been ultra successful. his name is John wooden and he was a really successful pro basketball coach. he had won 10 NCAA championships,and his team once had a streak of 88 straight winning games.so this coach had been just as successful as Ben(but Ben had success as a business person) but his life turned out differently. he had players calling him once a week to tell him that they loved him and asking him for his advice in all kinds of different ways in life. He married young and was faithful and devoted to his wife for 53 years until she died. he said that he had lived a good life, and had watched kids and grandchildren grow but he was now looking forward to going to be with Jesus. when smith asked him what the secret to his life was, the coach said that in 1935 he made up his mind to live by a set of principles and he stuck to them: "...they are based on the bible and the teachings of Jesus.Principles like courage and honesty and hard work,character and loyalty,and virtue and honor-these are what constitute a good life"(page 25). after reading about this coach, I was struck by the differences of the places where these two successful men(they were close in age so they lived through most of the same world events)had ended up. both were successful and wealthy, yet one based his life on the narrative that happiness comes from that success, from looking after yourself and no one else. the other had based his life on a narrative that was based on Jesus. the first ended up a lonely man, with no one who cared about him, and the other ended up a happy man with family and friends and people who admired and respected him.
i think, and this is strictly my opinion, that its important to notice that the success itself was not what determined how they ended up. I think its important to notice this because sometimes it feels like if you want to be successful,if you want to have a really good job, or be able to go on nice vacations, or buy a summer house,etc then you are being selfish and greedy and so we are not supposed to want to be successful. i think that its okay to want those things, as long as we keep in mind that they are not our narrative for happines, and so our lives should not be shaped around them, but around the narrative of Jesus.most of my friends might disagree with me, but that is my opinion. if you want to be successful and have a lot of money, but you know that doesnt bring you happiness and you based ur life around the teachings of jesus, and you invest in friendships and relationships, in your family, and you put god first, then I think that you will end up like john.however, if you base ur life on ur wanting that success, and you dont invest in God, in relationships,in people,then ur gonna be like Ben. not right away, because as smith says "it takes a long time to ruin a life"(page 20), but in the end, u will find yourself alone,with only the intern chaplian to care about you.(if you want to hear how Ben's story ends up following his meetings with smith, then read the book! lol) again, am problaly wrong but it makes sense to me that success itself isnt wrong, but what importance we place on it, whether we make it our narrative to live our life.
the main thing i got out of this chapter is that we are all searching for happiness, so that's common. but we each follow a narrative that we think or are told by the world will lead to happiness. and not all narratives are right. in fact, none of those narratives are right except the narrative that follows Jesus. i think that i learned that a good and beautiful life is following God, and being with Him.no matter what.
one of the paragraphs that smith wrote towards the end of the chapter really stuck with me:
we cannot find happiness or joy apart from a life of obedience to the teachings of Jesus. C.S. Lewis wrote: "God cannot gives us a happiness and peace apart from Himself,because it is not there. there is no such thing." God is not being stingy and withholding joy apart from our obedience; there simply is no joy apart from a life with and for God."God,please give me happiness and peace," we plead, "but let me also live my life as I please." and God answers, "I cannot give you that. you are asking for something that does not exist." (page 300).
I like this paragraph because sometimes, following God is...painful and hard for me. I refuse to be content with what He wants for me, like being single, and having the guy i'm crazy about turn me down.I dont want to be single, and I want this guy to care about me the same way i care about him, but its not what God wants, and I'm thus in this place where I have chosen to follow God, yet i'm also not wanting to follow Him. this pararagraph tells me that its not that God wants me to follow him, to serve His every wish and command, but that He wants to give me a good and beautiful life, and the only way He can do that is if I am with Him, following Him,obeying Him; He cant do it any other way because He IS a good and beautiful life.
I'm gonna close this post with some sayings/quotes from this chapter that I truly fell in love with. in fact I'm gonna paint them on canvases and put them up in my house/apartment.
- "if the map does not agree with the ground, the map is wrong. the ground is never wrong"(page 29). this was said by a platoon sergeant who was a veteran to a young liutenant that was a friend of the author's. the lietenant and the sergeant were doing a field exersice and the lietenant said that the map said there was supposed to be a hill, but the hill wasnt there, and the sergeant said the above quote. now,i could explain why i love this, but its kinda self explanatory. the "map" is the narrative, the beliefs which we base our lives on, and "ground" is life. if your narrative doesnt agree with life, then the narrative is wrong. a lot of our narratives about happiness(and other things)dont agree with life. we need to change our maps.
- "earn the right to be proud and confident"(page 26). this was said by john wooden, the basketball coach I mentioned earlier in the post. this was something he would say to his players a lot, along with other principles/mottos. this was another difference between Ben and John. john did more than coach his players; he took an interest in them as people, he coached them in basketball and in life. Ben never used his status to reach others, to help them. I LOVE this saying because it is saying that you can be confident and proud of yourself, of your accomplishments, of your life,etc but you have to work to be able to have that right. and not just at the material things but in the spiritual ways, the person ways,etc.
