"YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT. YOU NEED ONLY PAY THE PRICE. - Harry Browne
FIVE BOOKS
I'm not sure why I have been feeling so introspective recently, but I have been looking inward a lot.
I have been thinking about five books that have helped shape my life, each one radically different from the others. You may notice that I do not include Shri Guru Granth Sahib ji among these books because, as any Sikh will tell you, it belongs in its own class alone and is not properly a book, anyway. I have tried to leave our all holy scriptures, but found I could not leave out the Tao Te Ch'ing. Taoists, forgive me.
I have been thinking about five books that have helped shape my life, each one radically different from the others. You may notice that I do not include Shri Guru Granth Sahib ji among these books because, as any Sikh will tell you, it belongs in its own class alone and is not properly a book, anyway. I have tried to leave our all holy scriptures, but found I could not leave out the Tao Te Ch'ing. Taoists, forgive me.
OK, the five books, in the order that I read them:
The Tale of Genji by Shikibu Murasaki
Markings by Dag Hammarsjköld
Not available on line, but in print and easy to obtain
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Tao Te Ch'ing by Lao Tsu
How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World by Harry Browne
Two novels, two spiritual classics and a self-help book.
Do any of these surprise you? Do you now feel that maybe you don't know me as well as you thought you did?
If
that list doesn't seem to be strange, even contradictory , I can only
believe you haven't read these books. I would recommend them all to any
of my friends. Let me make something clear. I am not a follower of any
of these. I read Genji without becoming a member of the Heian Court, Markings without
becoming a Christian, Rand without becoming an objectivist. Lao Tsu
without becoming a Taoist and Browne without becoming a libertarian.
Nonetheless elements of all are an integral part of who I am today. I
identify myself primarily as Sikh, although the group identification is
secondary to my identity as an individual.
Now
that the list and links are here, I need a rest. Four of the five are
available on line. I believe these to be legal and ethical links. If
not, please let me know.
These are pictures of the editions I first had. (I love the Internet.)
Of
these books, the one with that clashed most with my accepted way of
life was Harry Browne. As I recall, the last project in the book was to
write my own personal moral code. What kind of hubris does that take
for a young woman in her twenties to do what most people believe is best
left to Deity? So, of course, I did it. I do not have a copy of it
here, but I put a lot of thought and work into it.
I
remember writing that true morality must be based on one’s most deeply
held values. I have always been value-oriented, so this is a logical
place to start. That is one reason it is necessary for an individual to
write her/his own code. What right does anyone have to dictate to
another what their most deeply held values are, anyway? So why would I
accept someone else’s code as my own? (“What is a value” is a bit
complicated and better left for another day. You can just use your
working knowledge of values for now.)
I
knew from the start that the value I held most dear was integrity. So
what exactly do I mean by “integrity”? First, I do not mean “honor.”
Honor is socially defined and varies from group to group. Honor
essentially means following the rules, spoken and unspoken, of the
group. So honor might demand one thing among my friends and something
completely different, even contradictory, within my family. For
example, my friends might expect me to lie about what they had been
doing (anything else would label me as a snitch, at the very best),
while my family might have a rule that we must always tell the truth.
Integrity
is not like that. My integrity comes from within me and has nothing to
do with what group I happen to be with at the moment. Integrity to me
means being true to what I know and believe to be true in any and all
circumstances. This is difficult for several reasons.
First,
it assumes that I know what I truly believe. That is most difficult.
How do I separate myself from all the groups I belong to, throw out
their ideas of what is right and wrong and then choose for myself what I
believe to be morally correct? I think most people never do that;
they follow what they are taught and are content with that. That’s
fine for them, I suppose. Sheep are fine animals, in their own way.
I
am not a sheep. Neither are my close friends.
 |
| These are not my close friends. |
Integrity
demands that I ask myself questions such as, what am I willing to live
for? What am I willing to die for? When and what am I willing to
compromise? These questions really need to be asked and answered in
advance of a crisis to be helpful. Very few people, if any, are able to
be clear-headed in a crisis and even if they are able, generally action
needs to be immediate, so there is no time for thinking. I cannot even
suggest how someone else might answer those questions, but I have
answered them for myself and lived my life according to my personal
answers. I am not going to answer them here; those who know me know my
answers, those who don’t, have no reason to know.
I
need to add here that it is impossible to know how you will react in a
crisis until you are actually there. However, if you have thought it
out in advance, you are much more likely to act in accordance with your
integrity than if you did not. I know that I have. And there have been times when I haven't.
Once
the individual has answered these questions and knows where s/he
stands, the fun begins. Now is the time to actually live according to
them. This is often quite difficult and the rewards are beyond
immeasurable. My personal integrity demands that I either tell the
truth or refuse to answer. Sometimes this is a bit dicey, at best. I
remember someone once asking me about herself, “Do you think I’m a good
person?” The blunt answer was, “No, you do things that I find
reprehensible and by my standards, you’re really not a good person, at
all.” I admit I fudged a bit and still managed to tell the truth: “It
doesn’t matter what I think. What is important is what you think about
yourself.” Actually, that is closer to the truth than my opinion would
have been. Fortunately, she dropped the subject, but had she gone on, I
might have been compelled to give my blunt answer. What I could not do
was say, “Yes, I think you’re a good person.”
Before
I canonize myself here, I need to answer one question. Do I always act
with integrity? The answer, sadly, is, no. I am neither Howard Roarke
nor Lao Tsu; I sometimes let myself down. Over the years, though,
those times have become fewer and now I can generally expect that I will
follow the rules I have laid down for myself.
So
integrity means knowing what I believe and living accordingly. It also
means that I must change my beliefs if I become convinced that they are
in error. Correcting old errors is good. As knowledge and experience
increase, old ideas may become shallow and false. In addition, I do
make mistakes in judgment sometimes, after all.
Clinging to old beliefs that I have outgrown is both dishonest and limiting.
Clinging to old beliefs that I have outgrown is both dishonest and limiting.
I do not believe in limiting myself.
I think this is one thing all five books have in common: they are all deeply concerned with integrity.
I
think that is enough on integrity for now. Back to my moral code. I
have forgotten most of it, and I would really like to know how much I’ve
followed, how much I’ve changed and have a glimpse of the woman I was
back before life became serious. I think my values are pretty much the
same, but my understanding of them and how I apply them, I hope, has
grown over the last 40 years. I do clearly remember two statements,
both of which I still hold dear.
1. Do not knowingly say things that are not true
2. Never surrender your weapons to anyone.
And in big red letters across the top I had written:
I have always had a small problem with authority.
