We Are Half Awake

I'm back! It's been "one of those weeks" during which I was up, I was down, I was overwhelmed and overworked and couldn't think of much beyond getting through the work day (and I do mean work!), getting home and going to bed.

But in the meantime I've had some bloggable inspirations which I intended to begin putting into writing today, when I received the following from a friend. You may have received it too. It's from spiritualwealth.com and so well worth reading that I decided not simply to link to the article, which you can do here, but to post it here, along with the appropriate attribution. I hope you find some nugget here that gives you an "aha!" moment. I did.


THE CASH VALUE OF THE AMERICAN MIND
by Alexander Green
Although the economy is on the mend and the stock market has taken a big

bounce off the bottom, tough times remain for many Americans.

Unemployment is high. Bankruptcies and foreclosures are near record

levels. Repo lots are overflowing. Worry and stress are on the rise in many

households.

Some of these folks might want to visit psychologist William James, even

though he's been dead for a hundred years.

James (1842-1910) was an author, philosopher, scientist, Harvard professor and giant in American intellectual history.

He trained as a medical doctor but never practiced medicine. He broke new ground as a physiologist and psychologist. He studied religion and psychic phenomena and wrote three classic books, including The Varieties of Religious Experience, the acknowledged inspiration for the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the world's most effective treatment programs.

Although his name is not widely recognized outside academia today, James

made major contributions to psychology, philosophy, literature, teaching

and religious studies. He coined numerous words and phrases including

pluralism, time-line, stream of consciousness, live option and moral

equivalent of war. Historian Jacques Barzun writes that James' book

Principles of Psychology is "an American masterpiece which, quite like

Moby Dick, ought to be read from beginning to end at least once by every

person professing to be educated. It a masterpiece in the classic and total

sense."

What do so many find inspiring about James? In part, it was his life itself,

his legendary zest for living. James loved to travel, hike and mountain-

climb. He served as a naturalist and accompanied Louis Agassiz on his

expedition to explore the upper reaches of the Amazon. He churned out

articles, books and hundreds of public lectures while carrying a full teaching

load at Harvard. When he died from heart failure in his late 60s, his

contemporaries said he had literally worn himself out.

Despite James's many accomplishments, his life was not without its

setbacks. He suffered from ailments of the eyes, skin, stomach and back. He

was diagnosed with neurasthenia and depression. He contracted smallpox in

Brazil. Three siblings, including novelist Henry James and diarist Alice

James, were afflicted with invalidism. His beloved sister Alice died of breast

cancer at 44.

However, James believed that we are meant to spend our lives being

curious, active, and fully engaged.

He was also one of the first to try to reconcile science and religion. In

particular, he was interested in human spiritual experience, a realm that is

difficult to capture by logic or observation, and nearly impossible to nail down

scientifically.

Yet he found a way. James is the father of the distinctly American

philosophy known as Pragmatism, the doctrine that truth reveals itself in

practice, regardless of its origins. Something is true if it doesn't contradict

known facts and it works.

James thought a belief should be judged by its results. He was more

interested in the fruits of an idea than its roots and advised people to look for

a truth's "cash value," arguing that a belief is true if it allows you to live a

fuller, richer life.

He was particularly interested in showing men and women how to convert

misery and unhappiness into growth. As you can see from some of his

remarks, the approach is nothing if not pragmatic:

- Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.

- Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the

consequences of any misfortune.

- If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past

or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different

reality system.

- Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources

are than we had supposed.

- Compared with what we ought to be, we are half awake.

- Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

- Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

- Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

- Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

James taught that we can change our lives by altering our attitudes of mind.

He called pessimism "a disease" and said it could be cured by substitution.

You can change, for example, "I have to exercise today" to "I get to exercise

today." "I get to visit my grandmother" can be substituted for "I have to visit

my grandmother." The shift is a subtle one, but powerful.

The essence of a belief is the establishment of a habit, a willingness to act.

That begins with a change of mind. The best motivation is always an

inspiriting attitude.

As a pioneering psychologist, James's primary interest was how the mind

can bring about life-changing effects. Yes, we can always grouse about

circumstances. But it is not what fate does to us that matters. What matters

is what we do with what fate hands us.

"All that the human heart wants," declared James, "is its chance."

Carpe Diem,

Alex

Copyright © 2011 by The Oxford Club, L.L.C

Why Do I Love Bette Davis?

Years ago, when I lived in Los Angeles – late ‘80’s, early ‘90’s – my then-partner Robert worked at an answering service located in West Hollywood. It was called Crestview and was located in a fairly nondescript office in a fairly nondescript high rise at 9000 Sunset Boulevard. (I think they’re still there.) This was way before mobile phones had become ubiquitous and you were really on the cutting edge if your answering machine was solid state rather than cassette tape-based. Celebrities in those days wanted a living person to answer their phones, rather than a machine, and among their clients they counted a certain number of celebrities whose careers were in a bit of eclipse at the time. 

One such client was Hollywood legend Bette Davis, who by that time had gone through a number of health crises but was still going strong, or trying to, feisty as ever and always willing to work. "I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box," she once said. Always with her was her personal assistant Kathryn Sermak, who would call in to the service at the end of the day to see if there had been any messages. One day a man called twice to speak to Bette Davis, only to learn that the number he had reached was a service, whereupon he hung up. Apparently he thought he was going to speak to the legend herself.

At the end of that day, for some reason, Bette herself, not Kathryn, called in for her messages. Robert informed her that there had been no messages, only two nuisance calls from someone who was probably a fan and thought he was calling her home. Upon delivering this news, Robert said there was a brief silence on the other end of the line, broken when at last Bette barked “I think people are hideous!” and hung up.

I’ll leave speculation about why gay men of a certain age love certain movie stars for the amateur psychologists and social scientists. I can only assume it has something to do with a certain spirit, determination, an indefinable quality of, for want of another word, “spunk”. Of course, there’s the cult of Judy Garland, whose story was very different from Davis’s: I doubt that Bette would have countenanced Judy’s addiction to pills, her lateness to the set and what could be interpreted as unprofessional behavior. Yet there’s no denying that she was explosively talented and worked, worked, worked to the bitter, unfortunate end. It’s easy to ascribe the adoration of Garland by a certain generation of gay men as being based in their shared feelings of loneliness, fragility, the yearning for love and acceptance. But as we’ve come to find out, Judy was made of stronger stuff and had a core of steel, reinforced with a boundless sense of humor.

After that who is there? Joan Crawford is, unfortunately, more of a camp icon, although her life and career have been reexamined and she seems to be getting her due as something more than the wild-eyed, hanger-wielding harpy of  “Mommie Dearest”. Katharine Hepburn? Admired, has her fans. No big gay cult that I’m aware of. Same for Dietrich, Garbo, the rest.

So we’re back to square one: why do I love Bette Davis? Well, there are many times when I think people are hideous, so we have that in common. And, like many of the stars of that era she was not traditionally pretty. Which we also have in common. But in many of her best films, she’s astonishingly beautiful: “Jezebel”, “Deception”... and let’s not forget the transformation of Charlotte Vale in “Dark Victory”. She’s a knockout. Of course makeup, lighting and camera angles had much to do with it, and she learned how to use them all to her advantage.

But she was courageous in the roles she played and fought for. She wasn’t afraid to appear unattractive or behave badly if the role demanded it. “Of Human Bondage” made her a star and by the end of that one she was not, trust me, a pretty picture. To play Elizabeth I she shaved most of her head for authenticity. And of course, there’s “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” for which she designed her own makeup, based on her belief that her character is so desperate to hang on to her youth that she rarely washed or removed her makeup. So she was deeply committed to her craft. I’d like to think that, if I ever throw myself back into acting, I’ll have the same ethos.

But that ain’t it.

At least for me, when you get right down to it, it was the fact that she spoke her mind and hang the consequences. That we do not have in common, although I trust that with age I’ll become less concerned with what people think about me and my opinions. That quality of no BS honesty is nowhere more on display than in what is arguably her best film, “All About Eve”. Her Margo Channing is a survivor, tough and temperamental, selfish, yes, but good-hearted and larger than life and, underneath it all, still a bit afraid and vulnerable. Which is to say, she’s a human being.

But somewhere along the way we’ve been led to believe that we, as human beings, can be even better human beings. The pundits and life coaches and cheerleaders and those people who pop up on PBS during pledge drives...there’s a whole raft of folks out there telling us how to be better than we are. They know how, and they’re just busting to tell all the rest of us! But I get the sense from Bette Davis that she would have had some choice words for some of these people. I get the sense that she was fine with who she was.

It’s not that I want to live a life like Bette Davis’s, or Margo Channing’s for that matter. (Although that apartment of hers is very Upper East Side and would be more than adequate for me. Not to mention having Thelma Ritter to mix my cocktails and tuck me in.) I just would like to have more moments of belief in myself, more spine to speak my mind or talk back to ignorance. I suppose for many people affirmations and “journaling” and any number of other techniques might work. But more and more I think that, like so many things, the best way to develop that spine, that fearlessness, is just to get out there and do it. Say it. Try it.

Action is the key. Even standing still, Bette Davis was in motion. Could we all do with a bit of improvement here and there? Of course. But you can think about something all your life, and if you don’t do it, as difficult as it may be, it’s all theory.

The inscription on Bette's grave is “She did it the hard way.” I’m still thinking about my epitaph. But as of this moment it starts “Fasten your seatbelts...”