The Source of Self-Regard - Toni Morrison Page 0,27

or remember that human invention: time. Its absence (the absence of time) has been thinkable during the whole of your lives. I would talk about the future if only it were a rolled carpet you had only to kick to see it unfurl limitlessly before your feet.

Surely there must be some talk of responsibility. I am addressing, after all, bright, industrious, accomplished people who are about to shoulder the very considerable weight of educated adulthood. So there should be some mention of responsibility: the need for and the risk of assuming the burden of one’s own life and, in the course of that, assuming the care of the life of another (a child, a friend, a mate, a parent, an acquaintance, even, perhaps, a stranger).

And shouldn’t I also touch upon goodness? Ethical choices? I ought to, since goodness is not only better and good for you, but it is also more interesting, more complicated, more demanding, less predictable, more adventuresome than its opposite. Evil really is boring. Sensational, perhaps, but not interesting. A low-level activity that needs masses or singularity or screams or screeching headlines to even get attention for itself, while goodness needs nothing.

And how can I leave out happiness? How could I omit the secret ingredients, the combination of which will invite, if not guarantee it? A little clarity, a bit of daring, some luck, and a great deal of self-regard. Then life is bountiful and one becomes both loved and lovable.

The future, responsibility, goodness—I’d love talking about all that, but not the last one: happiness. It makes me uncomfortable. Uneasy. I am not interested in your happiness. I am not sure it’s all it’s cracked up to be. I know, of course, that its pursuit (if not its achievement) is a legal one amended into the Constitution. I know that whole industries are designed to help you identify, attain, and feel it. One more article of clothing, the ultimate telephone, the best-appointed boat, an instantly timeless camera taking hundreds of shots of nothing to outlast the ages, the fastest diet, the perfect ice cream with all the pleasure of sugar and cream and none of their dangers. I know, also, happiness has been the real, if covert, target of your labors here, your choices of companions, of the profession, perhaps, that you will enter. And I do want you to have it; you clearly deserve it. Everyone does. And I hope it continues, or comes, effortlessly, quickly, always. Still, I am not interested in it. Not yours, nor mine nor anybody’s. I don’t think we can afford it anymore. I don’t think it delivers the goods. Most important, it gets in the way of everything worth doing. There was a time, for most of the history of the human race, in fact, when to contemplate and strive for happiness was critical, necessarily compelling. But I am convinced that focusing on it now has gotten quite out of hand. It has become a bankrupt idea, the vocabulary of which is frightening: money, things, protection, control, speed, and more.

I’d like to substitute something else for its search. Something urgent, something neither the world nor you can continue without. I assume you have been trained to think—to have an intelligent encounter with problem-solving. It’s certainly what you will be expected to do. But I want to talk about the step before that. The preamble to problem-solving. I want to talk about the activity you were always warned against as being wasteful, impractical, hopeless. I want to talk about dreaming. Not the activity of the sleeping brain, but rather the activity of a wakened, alert one. Not idle wishful speculation, but engaged, directed daytime vision. Entrance into another’s space, someone else’s situation, sphere. Projection, if you like. By dreaming the self permits intimacy with the Other without the risk of being the Other. And this intimacy that comes from pointed imagining should precede our decision-making, our cause-mongering, our action. We are in a mess, you know; we have to get out, and only the archaic definition of the word “dreaming” will save us: “to envision; a series of images of unusual vividness, clarity, order, and significance.” Unusual, clarity, order, significance, vividness. Undertaking that kind of dreaming we avoid complicating what is simple or simplifying what is complicated, soiling instead of solving, ruining what should be revered. We avoid substituting slogans like “national will” for national intelligence and perception. National will? What kind? Informed? Uninformed? Obstinate South African national will? Nineteen