Dorothy Rowe’s Guide to Life
A superb distillation of the wisdom of one of Britain’s most admired writers on the human condition.Dorothy Rowe gives insights and comfort on some of the most difficult aspects of life-including: identity and self-esteem, fear, depression and unhappiness, coping with people, power, agreed, guilt and selfishness and getting older.
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DOROTHY ROWE
Guide to Life
Some five hundred years before the birth of Christ the Greek poet Xenophanes wrote,
The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us; but in the course of time,
Through seeking we may learn, and know things better.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods,
Nor yet of the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it;
For all is but a woven web of guesses.>1
Albert Einstein wrote,
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.>2
THE SECRET of life is that there is no secret.
All that you need to know about life is there for you to see. All you have to do is open your eyes and recognize what you already know.
However, down the centuries, many people wanting power have tried to keep the secret. They have created their theories and their jargon, and told us that they and they alone know the secret of life. These are the people who have claimed to be the wisest of the wise. They have called themselves philosophers, theologians, clergy, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors – in short, experts on life and living. Jungians say we are all part of the collective unconscious, while psychiatrists say that we are the product of our genes. Each of these theories is a way of describing and explaining certain parts of human experience, but no one theory can describe, let alone explain it all.
Some of these people have always known that there is no secret, while others have insisted that they and they alone know the Secret Truth About Life.
Down the centuries a few of these experts have dared to reveal that there is no secret, and, consequently, have been reviled by their colleagues. How dare such renegades say that each of us can sort things out for ourselves! How dare they threaten the experts’ power, prestige and wealth!
The experts always protect themselves by forming themselves into an elite and guarding the entrance with a formidable barrier of examinations and rituals through which only a chosen few can pass.
When the selected few do get through the barrier they are faced with a choice. Do you now tell yourself that you are initiated into the Secret Truth About Life? Or do you bear the disappointment of your discovery that what you might have is simply a collection of useful research results (for instance, we now know that babies are born with the ability to distinguish faces from all other phenomena) and, if you look for it, the kind of wisdom in living which has always been available to every generation.
Amongst the experts this wisdom has been more known than used. On the whole, the personal lives of experts are far from edifying. Some experts do live wisely but most (I’m speaking from years of observation) manage their lives no better than the rest of us. They’ve been so busy being experts they haven’t learnt what they need to know.
The secret which is no secret is that there is a body of knowledge which concerns how to live wisely. This wisdom is available to all of us. You don’t need a brilliant intelligence and a superb education to understand it, absorb it and use it.
However, just as we are all born artists, musicians, mathematicians and explorers and our upbringing and education take most of these abilities away from us, so we are born with the ability to understand ourselves and life, and the adults around us pour scorn on this ability and forbid us to use it. In learning to be good, obedient members of society we lose touch with the knowledge we need if we are to live our lives in ways which are rich and fulfilling.
A rich and fulfilling life is not one of unalloyed happiness. No amount of wisdom can defend us from loss, disappointment, old age and death, nor from the idiocies committed by those who have political and economic power.
However, such wisdom does ensure that we can live comfortably with ourselves and with other people. Being comfortable with yourself means that you are not forever thinking about and worrying about yourself, always prey to difficult and unpleasant emotions. Being comfortable with other people means that you are not afraid of others but can enjoy their company. There’s no longer a barrier between you and other people. No longer burdened with the sense of your own inadequacies, you cease to see the world as a cold, evil, disappointing place and instead become aware of the world’s infinite possibilities.
