Mencius on Finding Our Life Paths
Should we search for our life's purpose when we are young?
At some point in the eighth grade, I read Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and made an immediate and life-changing decision: I would become a writer. I can not point to any specific aspect of that reading experience that fueled that desire. We’re talking about 1982 here, and whatever logic connected that novel to such a momentous decision has receded into the deepest folds of my memory.
The fact that I am still pursuing the path of a writer forty years later testifies to my primary virtue as a human: stubborn determination. This quality has served me well in many ways, especially two years ago when the universe tried to kill me in like ten different ways and somehow I survived. Many times during that experience I was prepared to throw in the towel, but some smoldering ball of determination in my chest just wouldn’t let me. Less dramatically, determination has enabled me to achieve other happy goals in my life: writing multiple books, getting tenure, loving the same woman for a few decades now.
But like many virtues, determination has a dark side. Sometimes I commit to something, realize part way through that I made a mistake, and yet I keep trudging down the path because just because I took the first step. I feel this most as a reader. I usually know within a few pages that a book won’t be worth my time, and yet I almost always keep reading it for no other reason than I started it. Not only will I typically finish books that I don’t want to finish, I also keep them afterwards. Apparently I view the purchase of a book as a lifetime commitment akin to a marriage vow.
I don’t have quite this same level of commitment to pieces of writing I start, but that’s only because I have a well-developed talent for self-deception in that realm. I have dozens—perhaps hundreds—of half-written books and essays, and realistically most of them will remain partially written until the end of time. I reconcile myself to this unfinished work by saving it all and assuming that I will eventually return to it later. I also create a “Runoff” file for every piece of writing I do finish, and I deposit there all the material that I have excised from the final version, once again telling myself that I might find another use for those words in the future.
When I reflect upon the role that determination has played in my life, then, I can see both positive and negative effects. But when it comes to my ultimate career path, I wonder whether I should count it as a virtue or a vice. Should I have held myself—and still be holding myself—to a vow I made about my life when I was thirteen? Did I close myself off to other possibilities by holding tightly to that fevered teenage dream for so many years?
Such questions have surfaced my mind in the wake of my recent reading of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, a 2016 book by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh. The book stems from a popular course that Puett has taught at Harvard for many years; to put the course into book form, he partnered with Gross-Loh, a journalist who earned her Ph.D. in East Asian history at Harvard. The book reads exactly like a survey course, presenting historical and philosophical context for a half-dozen Chinese philosophers from the Axial Age, along with overviews of their philosophical contributions.
The chapter that caught my attention and inspired the reflections in the essay focused on Mencius, a Confucius scholar who lived in the 4th century BC. As the authors tell it, Mencius had been a scholar for most of his life, and as he aged he wanted to see his ideas make a difference in the world. He convinced a powerful leader in another state to give him a government position. The leader promised to listen to Mencius’ philosophical advice in the administration of his state. But the leader didn’t follow the the philosopher’s counsel, and Mencius realized that his boss just wanted some philosophy-washing for the decisions he had already made. Frustrated and dispirited, Mencius went home.
According to Puett and Gross-Loh, this experience shaped the philosophical writings that we still read from Mencius two millennia later. They emerge from a conflict between two different ways of viewing the world: as a stable and coherent place, or one that is fragmented and capricious. Whatever we might say, most of us form decisions and the actions as if we believed the former. Mencius, stung by his life experiences, argued for the latter. His perspective might seem overly pessimistic, but Mencius viewed it as the ground for following the best possible path for a human life.
The realization that “the world is fragmented . . . and in perpetual disorder” means that we have to be willing to adapt ourselves to always changing conditions. This has deep implications for our attitude towards ourselves and our lives, and especially toward the kind of life-changing commitments we make when we are young people:
When we rationally make big decisions based on the idea that world is coherent, we assume a clear-cut situation, clear-cut possibilities, a stable self, unchanging emotions, and an unchanging world. But these things aren’t givens at all. By making concrete, defined plans, you are actually being abstract, because you are making these plans for a self that is abstract: a future self that you imagine based on who you think you are now, even though you, the world, and your circumstances will change. You cut yourself off from the real, messy complexities that are the basis from which you can develop as a human being. You eliminate your ability to grow as a person because you are limiting that growth to what is in the best interests of the person you happen to be right now, and not the person you will become. (The Path, 77-78, italics mine)
When I read that final sentence, it made me catch my breath a little bit, as it seemed to speak directly to my own experience making a decision about my life when I was a very young person, and then sticking with it for several decades. It’s not like I was some paragon of good decision-making when I was thirteen. But what really gave me pause after I finished the chapter and had some time to reflect upon it was the realization that my questionable approach to career development had perhaps shaped my perception of the ways in which people should make decisions about their careers when they are young, including when they are in college.
During my twenty five years as a teacher and faculty advisor, I discovered—much to my surprise—that many students didn’t have a clear sense of the destination of their life’s journey during their college years, and even long after they left school. I hope I was open-minded and encouraging to such students, and in general I have always recommended to students that they should keep their minds open and explore possibilities when it comes to careers. But I gave this advice on the assumption that, after they had tried a lot of different things, they would find the ONE THING that would spark their soul fire and carry them to the ends of their days.
Reading The Path and reflecting upon Mencius’ ideas has made me question that assumption—and I’m glad about that, because I see now that I was generalizing about life paths from my own experiences. But I’m not the only one who seems to be doing so. Colleges and universities advertise themselves as the places where students will discover their passions. Self-help books argue for a purpose-driven life. We admire people who have shaped their lives through dedication to the pursuit of some meaningful goal. I expect that many college faculty have a career story similar to mine: discovering some passion that has driven their work ever since. Whatever we might say to students, they still might observe the lives of their teachers and notice how many of us are fired by passion and purpose. We might preach the virtues of adaptability, or warn them about how today’s jobs won’t exist in the future, but teachers work in jobs that have existed for a very long time, and will continue to exist in the future. Are we really the best models for charting a flexible path through life’s thickets?
Take none of this as an expression of regret for my life choices. Sticking to a decision I made in a moment of inspiration forty years ago has created a great life for me. But if you, like me, have ever sought to inspire students by encouraging them to discover their passions and pursue them with determination, Mencius’s argument might be worth considering. I am currently not in a student advising role, but if I ever returned to one, my perspective on that work would be informed by what I have learned from The Path’s presentation of Mencius. Whether we are 13, 21, or even 54, we should remember that we live in a capricious world, and we should always be willing to adapt our goals to changing circumstances. Otherwise, you might find yourself, as the authors put it, “boxed in by a life that, at best, reflects only a piece of who you thought you were at one moment in time.”
In inspirational moments, people like to quote Mary Oliver’s famous line about life paths: “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Whatever Oliver might have meant by that line, people interpret it as a commentary on the importance of choosing your life path wisely. If I were standing on the stage as a commencement speaker, or even just sitting across from a student in my office, I might suggest a very different question: Of the many possible lives that are available to you, which one are you choosing right now—and how prepared will you be to choose another one when your circumstances change?
I liked this a lot, Jim! Very insightful.