The Better Letter: The Power of Good
It's my anniversary.
I typically write TBL on Thursday evening. This Thursday evening is (was) my 43rd wedding anniversary.
I married up in a big way.
Forty-three wonderful years. Three children. Nine grandchildren.
And I’m not able to finish this week’s TBL.
I’ll get back to my series on making behavioral finance practical next week. I trust you will understand. Thank you.
If you like The Better Letter, please subscribe, share it, and forward it widely.
Thanks for reading.
The Power of Good
It’s dusty in here.
Life Has Never Been Normal
In “Learning in War-Time,” C.S. Lewis discussed how should we cope when the world around us is burning. A brief excerpt from his address to students at Oxford in 1939 follows (my emphasis).
“…I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective, The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it.
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.
“Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself.
“If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life.’
“Life has never been normal.
“Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right.
“But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons.
“They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never come. Periclean Athens leaves us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral Oration.
“The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumably they have their reward.
“Men are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on the scaffold, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae.
“This is not panache; it is our nature.”
At the very end of “Learning in War-Time,” Lewis makes one additional point.
“If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we look for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned and not a moment too soon. But if we thought that for some souls and at some times the life of learning humbly offered to God was in its own small way one of the appointed approaches to the divine reality and the divine beauty, which we hope to enjoy hereafter, we think so still.”
Totally Worth It
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This is the best thing I read this week. The worst. The silliest. The saddest. The sweetest, unless it was this. The nicest. The loveliest. The most extraordinary. The most revealing. The most insightful. The most interesting. The most thought-provoking. The least surprising, unless it was this. Xs and Os. It’s complicted. Which is it? True-dat. Flor-i-duh. Good news. Great news.
Please send me your nominees for this space to rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter (@rpseawright).
A glitch in tournament rules left Barbados and Grenada competing to score own goals in a 1994 Caribbean Football Cup tie. No match could end in a draw; goals scored in extra time counted double; Barbados had to win by at least two goals to go through to the next round, otherwise Grenada would go through. As full-time approached, Barbados was one goal ahead. Now, do the game theory.
Mike Tyson paid a guy named Crocodile $300,00 in 1996 to dress in fatigues and repeatedly shout “guerrilla warfare” at Tyson news conferences. Nice work if you can get it.
Christopher Scalia on the Doobie Brothers: “If Donald Rumsfeld were a rock critic, he might have observed that there are bands you know, bands you don't know, and bands you don't know you know. For many people, the Doobie Brothers fall into that third category.”
The TBL Spotify playlist now includes more than 200 songs and about 15 hours of great music. I urge you to listen in, sing along, and turn the volume up.
Here’s an excellent cover of the 1975 hit by the Amazing Rhythm Aces, “Third-Rate Romance.”
Benediction
This week’s benediction comes from Charity Gayle.
Amen.
Thanks for reading.
Issue 118 (June 17, 2022)