Ups downs and all in between

The good man cannot be miserable, though he may not be blessed with good fortune.

– Ethica Nicomachea 1100b

This is not necessarily a follow-up from my previous post (We’ll See), but there does seem to be some overlap. There I posted the old Chinese story of the farmer and his son and horse. The point was simple: we never know what the future will bring; we don’t know whether something that has happened to us is good or bad (as Kyle suggested in the comments).

This quote again makes me think about the vicissitudes of life and the way we make our way through them. Nathan, over at Dangerous Harvests, has a great post showing the wisdom path through tough times. I couldn’t help but chuckle over his statement:

“If you take a look at crankiness, it’s pretty easy to see that it’s made up of non-cranky elements.”

Such wisdom is part of what makes up Aristotle’s notion of the good man, a eudaimon (which literally means one with a “good spirit”). This term is often translated as “happy” – which is to be taken with a great deal of caution. The happiness here is a very deep-felt and cultivated one, certainly not a happiness based on ignorance or fleeting gains.

But another path is the compassion path, that of selflessly giving to others in whatever way possible. Neither path is better, and neither is truly complete in and of itself. The Buddha taught that these were the two “wings of awakening” and, like a bird, we need both to reach our destination.

But, more importantly, I wonder about this idea that such a person “cannot be miserable.” It’s a common Western view that it’s somehow our right to be miserable every once in a while. Or that being miserable adds flavor to life, perhaps making the good days all that much better (the common image that one who clings neither to gain or loss, pleasure or pain… must be some kind of zombie). And the corollary is, of course, that if I am miserable, even if only from time to time, I must not be a “good person.”

Hmm…