Consolation for your Being
This blog post delves into forming an understanding of how we as individuals hold different personalities and which one of these is suitable. This is based on my reading of Alain De Botton's work.
Human condition owes a substantial credit to our mutual existence with the other humans. From reciprocity, to interactions, to relations and professions; our conversations form the common thread. Conversing is a hobby for some while a task for others. Whether you’re good or bad at communicating partly depends on meeting someone else’s expectation criteria. Many simply hear you, often with a time-bound and fixed bit of words they would roll down their ear drums, but hardly listen. We find talking to someone nicer and easier while with others our gut gnaws and we want that particular conversation to pass like a jet.
There are scenarios where a conversation requires deeper comprehension and communication. A conversation which the other person wants to have because they might be in dearth of finding a suitable person due to the paucity of time or a random stranger shouldering stress or a friend who wants to open up quickly. Mostly, we tend to hear them with an outer intent to listen. This exhibit of ours, though seemingly suitable, remains a half attempt. It’s hard to find such a person who matches your frequency (rare). Some are just taking a dig at you and some are digging their own and dumping at you!
In most conversations, someone is taking a dig at you and some are digging their own and dumping at you.
For those who are already adept in the traits this article wants to share, things are already merrier. (This is not just due to the impact of our conversation, some people understand while some don’t, but a deeper satisfaction of having given proper time to help someone find solace; a personal clarity based on zero expectation.) But when we sometimes portray directness, honesty and cut-short-your-words type replies, we are in conformity with the voluminous trend of the times we live in. Our self-perceived honesty, directness, and bold conviction in stating our beliefs carries more heft nowadays; we bask in the glory of adorning an authentic self. There is a term suitable for this Alain De Botton covers this in his book- The School of Life- called being ‘frank’.
Such is the level of our advancement now that soft diplomacy- politeness & etiquette- is mostly limited to a tactic between countries. We have departed from the practicality and virtue that this softness used to hold amongst individuals. It’s not gone but merely limited to sensible-islands amongst the sea of frank people. People are not wholly to be blamed for this, hustling for bread & butter while jostling in cut-throat competition to survive professionally and trying to make the ends meet doesn’t provide the much-needed luxury of time, and thereon of self-reflection, to look back and internalise how we could be lacking inter-personally. But we still can.
Your fame is tied to the kite of your authentic, bold, frank and condescending self which is relevant more so than ever now. Bigger the audience you can attract with your so-called directness, the bigger your persona gets and it begets the more of it. It's very urgent to understand the aspects of being a polite or a frank person. I offer you the understanding, based on my reading of Alain’s work. We are all guilty of being falsely frank in the garb of honesty on occasions and also a worthy companion in memorable conversations. Believe me, we could have done better if we deeply knew what our frankness meant at the cost of moulting our politeness. Somehow politeness has come to be seen as a tactic of weakness and its reputation has dwindled over the last couple of centuries, notes Alain and it is unarguable.
Who are frank people?
Frank people live with the misbelief that what they wish to say is fundamentally acceptable to all (not a doubt that it may or may not be); that this type of honesty cannot be “vindictive, disgusting, tedious, or cruel.”
This self-perceived and misplaced purity of truth erodes the rationale and the need of self-censorship.
They charmingly assume that others also feel how they feel in the moment and others are as robust and invulnerable as they should be. This makes them blind to a visible cue that the other person might be hurting inside despite their normal appearance.
They can be kind but with grand gestures and impatient with the smaller ones like stopping to check on someone how they are doing, how’s someone’s cooking who tried their best to offer them culinary delight, how’s their subordinates doing amidst the workload and deadlines, a sweet gesture of sitting for a few minutes etc. For them a change is worth it if it's substantial and bigger.
They are so assured of their ability to make snap judgements about people and circumstances that a second thought about the shortcomings in their viewpoint hardly occurs.
So, a frank mindset is usually a self-inflated belief goblin with a skewed belief that the ones in front of them look similar to themselves and what goes inside a frank person must be going inside the others too. They are trying to paint the canvas with their ink and leave no space for other’s colours in the common canvas of coexistence. The polite ones on the other hand understand that there is a whole read-worthy novel behind someone’s made up appearance. They communicate with generous benefit of the doubt about someone else’s acts and genuinely feel interested in un-layering their story through deeper conversations or mannerism. A polite fellow knows that a canvas is meaningful in the diversity of colours.
The opposite of a frank fellow is a shy person, but with a common self-inflated belief goblin, who believes that what they wish to say is either boring or uninteresting for others. Like frankness, it is also misinformed and rests upon one's idea that what they believe to be true about themselves is essentially true for others and everywhere. But this is far from the truth because both shy and frank people live in their own bubbles rather than seeing the world for its variety and complexity. The antidote to shyness is being intriguing and feeling the same under your skin and then showing it to others. Don't downplay your voice and willingness to speak just because you think it's any less interesting compared to what someone is saying.
When we dismiss a person as boring, we are merely pointing to someone who has not had the courage or concentration to tell us what it is like to be them. But we invariably prove compelling when we succeed in detailing some of what we crave, envy, regret, mourn and dream.-Alain De Botton
Striving for an inherent perfection is troublesome and presuming the same ideals in others adds to that. It's okay to not be in an upbeat tone or over friendly gestures most of the time because once we behave under sensible prescription of our shared nuances, flaws, strengths, and passions with others, our interactions default to the side of a warm politeness.
Self Esteem = Success/ Expectations. We are not always humiliated by failing at things; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then fail to reach it. - Alain De Botton
We are consoled when we are out of our mould. The mould could be your idea of a desired goal, personality, physique, or passions; their pursuit is worthwhile but marrying your identity with attaining them also makes you vulnerable to an eventual inner burnout. We acquire what we wish to be based on what we learn to be. This primarily comes from the people who signal certain virtues or fortunes to you; we catch those signals directly or indirectly and somewhere makes them as our own. There is a limitation to such a belief building process. The times we live in are such that the timeless wisdom of the past seems more distant despite the abundance of information overloading our senses.
We are mainly governed by the ideas of the past 100-200 years like romanticism which has had a defining impact on western civilisation; the cudgel of imperialism brought the same to the rest of the world. The result is a slow societal regression when it comes to emotional education: values of fleeting feelings sweep the genre; aim for an outer beauty and perfection undermines the art and beauty in general; relations which needs the foundation of rationality, practicality and feelings are increasingly standing on the feelings alone; often our lack of patience and persistence towards goals take the feel-based route to shortcuts.
The two personalities
Our understanding of human nature can get easier if for the sake of convenience, we could think in terms of categories. Based on the recent book I have completed, the School of Life, two interesting categorizations have left impressions on my mind. The two personalities are romantics and classicists. There are certain differences between the two as per the book:
The Romantics believe in listening to the inner voice more than the intellect. The supreme romantic art form is music. For them, the impulse to put things into categories intellectually is undesirable. While the classicists like order and they look at the emotional world through rationality and inquiry. It's not like they don't know about feelings and intuitions, they just don't respect them enough to blindly follow them. They understand the mind is capable of biases and the impulses should be their servants.
The formal education that society adheres to is not as valuable to the romanticists as the education based on inner voices. While the classical temperament understands, the value of education has the bedrock of civilization; it does not mean they respect the education system, but they do realise that it needs to be improved. The classicists seek to encode some lessons for the future generations to save them from repeating the same mistakes while the romanticists insist on experiencing life based on the inner guidance. The latter is more susceptible to uncertainties and lack of deeper sense because if you are always guided with emotions and feelings, you are sure to remain unsettled.
Romantics would believe in pure honesty rooted in frankness while the classicists believe in politeness because they value a nuanced view of what it means to be a human (ills and wows). Authenticity is the highest form of morality for the romantics (even if it means piercing someone with your words) while strategic inauthenticity is the mark of a kind soul (more sensible of human nature).
Idealism versus realism- I think these are self-explanatory based on the above three traits.
Romantics exist with a desire for an ideal future because they focus on how things should be instead of caring to look deeper into how they actually are. The classicists understand that the world is not so cheerful after all and one does not need to lose sleep over an ideal world. They understand the ironies of the world; the courage to accept and live with them.
Romantics seldom fit in with routine, especially in domestic life, because they dislike the ordinary and like to live in “heroism, excitement, and end to boredom.” The classicists on the other hand value routine as an antidote to chaos; they would prefer to be good than to be popular. The romantics are not content with an ok existence while the classicists are aiming higher and keeping in mind the value of mundaneness in life.
In terms of their alignment with people or ideas, the romantics are wholeheartedly on one side, no middle paths in their moral judgement of others. Example: partners should love everything about each other and a philanthropist should draw no personal benefit from his charities. For romantics, “it is very important to feel right; winning is, by comparison, not such an urgent matter.” While classicists do not believe in the innate good or bad; they understand that both of these exist and one has to constantly live in a tug of war of being good or bad. “It is classical to think that a decent person might in many areas hold views you find deeply unpalatable.”
“We should develop the sort of confidence that emerges from understanding a basic fact of human psychology: that we’re all very prepared to accept the less than perfect, if only we can be guided to appreciate it with skill, confidence and charm.”-Alain De Botton (Zen philosophy behind kintsugi ideal of wabi-sabi)
The End: Wisdom and its 12 traits
Realism: also situated in present despite having dreams
Appreciation: of the yin and yang in aspect of life
Folly: understanding of inherent flaws and their permanence in our nature
Humour: to be mindfully light about various shortcomings or traits of us
Politeness
Self-acceptance
Forgiveness
Resilience
Envy
Success and Failure: being able to process them and their effects profoundly
Regrets: that life is unlived without having regrets. Don’t regret regrets!
Calm: strive for the rock of tranquillity in the turbulent sea of anxiety
I started this article for the consolation of our beings: our eccentricities and mannerisms; our frankness and politeness; our impulses and self-control; our longings and detachment. Categorisations are to know the differences between personalities and attitude, not that you can put yourself into the shoes of either a romantic or a classicist, but to aim for consolation about the realisation that we all are both of these variously. The philosophy of Alain is an awakening call from the slumber of recent ideals espoused by romanticism to remember the timeless classical mindset. In my view, romanticism is like a walk in the park meant for occasional strolls while the classical mindset is the very terrain we are supposed to tread on (It’s not always rosy, but it’s the reality.) Do feel but follow the feeling with faculties of your cognition!
The consolation lies in knowing that the emotional world is not so simple that only feelings can hold the beacon of light for your guidance. Feelings are a reality of our minds, but so are intelligence, rationality, delayed gratification, and power to distinguish all of these. The mind, like the world we live in, presents all forms of diversity whether of the beings or the material creations of these beings. How can we simply outweigh the ‘how we feel part’ with ‘how we are’ or ‘how we could be’ parts based on other faculties of our minds.