As New Year approaches, I am thinking about New Year’s
resolutions. Most of those I have made in the past have gone unattained,
ranging from losing weight to being a better husband and father. This year, one
notion seems stuck in my mind – namely, bringing out the best in others. That
is advice from my father, the rabbi, as he was explaining to me as an
adolescent what it meant to be a rabbi. I have paraphrased his advice as being
a rabbi was to be a teacher - someone who is the voice that encourages, the
ear that listens, the eye that reflects, the hand that guides, the face that
does not turn away. That is how he thought about bringing out the best in
others. Ironically, as he was trying to help me decide to become a rabbi, I was
becoming convinced that I could not live up to those demands as so well
exemplified in his life.
Even more ironic is the fact that I became a teacher
instead of becoming a rabbi. And now, towards the end of that career, I am
wondering to what extent I have met his criteria for being a teacher. My
conclusion is that I have fallen short, so I am considering adopting the New
Year’s resolution of bringing out the best in others.
Given my training, I am also wondering what bringing
out the best in others entails. What comes to mind first is the idea of being
the coach of an athletic team. The coach is trying to bring out the best in
team members. Why? To have a winning season? So that team members will feel
good about having done their best? So that team members will improve and do
even better next year? As I am not an athlete and have not been coached, I
really do not know. I do recall a high school boy who, as a junior lifesaver,
coached a blind and deaf child in swimming, however. The goal was to give the
child an enjoyable summer. The child had a different goal, however. He wanted
to learn to swim, and the boy’s coach decided to support that goal, which was
attained much to the surprise of the parents and the senior lifeguards. That
incident leaves me thinking that what is best for someone else is best left to
that person’s determination.
It seems to me that too many people think they know
what is best for someone else in terms of a career choice, or a religious
choice, or a place to live, or a job, or a partner, and so on. One of my
mentors in computer science told me that he did not know the religion of his
daughter who had just married. He said that he left such choices to his
children and purposefully chose not to interfere or even influence them one way or
another. I tried to follow his guidance but found myself unable to follow
through as well as he had done. Over the years, I discovered that my own
children often chose to do the opposite of what I had recommended even though I
usually only offered advice when asked.
I remember my father telling my sister when she was
about to ask a personal question that she should not ask if she was not willing to
hear the answer. She asked anyway and he told her the standard orthodox answer
about piercing parts of one’s body. He later eased up somewhat and allowed her
to have her ears pierced. He never turned away from his children or his wife of
so many years.
So, how do I bring out the best in others when I do
not know what is best for someone else? Leave it up to that person to say what
is best for him or her? There is a problem with that approach as well. In
thinking about my own case, I have often thought something was best for me when
it turned out not to be the case. Then there is Nietzsche’s criticism of
Socrates in Twilight of the Idols –
namely that Socrates claimed to know the value of life, of his own life, but
that Socrates failed to realize that one is not in a position to judge one’s
own life as that involves an inescapable bias. In addition, one can go as far
back as Plato to find the notion that acting badly (i.e., not doing what is best
for oneself, in Plato’s terms) is a result of ignorance or lack of
understanding what is truly good. Moreover, one can find emphasis on doing what
is good or what is right in nearly all religions, including Buddhism ,
Christianity, Confucionism, Islam, Judaism. I am particularly fond of Rabbi
Hillel’s formulation – “If I am not for myself,
who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
I like the balance between oneself and others in Hillel’s formulation. I like
the notion that by acting one way or another one is becoming more of one kind
of person and less of a different kind of person.
That last thought led me to Bouwsma’s note in one of
his unpublished journals – “surely your life will show what you think about
yourself.” Bouwsma was writing about Socrates in that entry and he considered
Socrates as someone who talked highly and acted accordingly leaving most others in
one of the remaining categories (talking low but acting well – quite rare; talking
and acting low – as in too many people in high political positions; talking
well but acting low – unfortunately not rare and the category in which Socrates
regarded so many Athenians). I know I have mixed up the labels – high and low,
well and badly – but perhaps the idea is still clear.
Where does that leave me? Well, I am still wondering how I
will determine how to bring out the best in others. Perhaps the most I can do
is ask another person if he or she believes that this or another course of action is what is best for him or her
and others involved. Or I might ask what kind of person someone who does this or that
becomes. Or, more innocently, I could ask what other options are possible and
what that person is assuming. Well, I can ask but I should not turn away.
