Is the Secret of Life Really Secret?
On #66
The bus was almost full when she got on. There were two empty seats, both on the aisle, both in the middle of the bus. In one window seat sat a mid-twenties woman, finger-twirling her long dirty-blond hair, swivel-staring back and forth between an open laptop and some papers spread over much of the seat. I was in the other window seat.
“Do you mind if I sit the window seat? It helps take some of the pressure off my back.”
“Certainly,” I said. I preferred aisles anyway, but had moved to the window as the bus filled up on the way from my New Jersey suburb to New York City. As I got up I remember hoping she wasn’t a talker. I had a meeting with a prospective client and wanted to “keep my head clear.”
She was a talker.
I guessed she was in her late seventies maybe early eighties. I was sixty-three then, beard still more blond than gray. Her hair was auburn with tight curls and didn’t look died, though it surely was. She might have been five feet tall, but probably not and roundly block-like in a diminutive way. She had an accent – Russian, or perhaps Eastern European.
“Were you born here?” She asked.
“No. I’m from the Boston area originally.” I answered realizing mid-answer that she probably meant in the United States.
“But in this country? Maybe you know how good you have it?”
She told me how her daughter was born here and “had no idea what it’s in like most places in the world. And her children? Don’t even talk about it!”
She talked to me for most of the remaining forty minutes into the city. I learned that she and her husband had moved here when they were just married. Her husband had started a business and built it into a success. She talked about how they had no money when they came, but sent their daughter to college and graduate school.
“Three years ago he died. It was quick, thanks God, and not exactly a surprise. He wasn’t all that well and he didn’t need to be working still at eighty. Can you imagine? He had offers on the business, but he said ‘Retire? And do what?’ So he died. I ran the business. I worked there early and did the books for years and we have good people. But last year I said ‘what am I crazy? And we sold it. For stupid money really. Now I’m rich. My daughter tells me not to say that, and maybe it really ‘isn’t that much money’ like she says, but when I think what we came here with . .”
She went all to tell me how she’d “give it all away to have him back” and she was looking a little sad, so I asked her the question I sometimes ask talkers:
“What is the secret of life?”
The question – a little history
I remember the first time I asked that question. It was to Mico, the guy who cut my hair. I remember that he tried to dodge the question, but then thought for a minute and gave me a pretty profound answer.
Over the years, I’ve asked this question to random people many times. I’ve asked it to cab and Uber drivers, bartenders and servers. I asked it to a homeless man in Pittsburgh who struck up a relationship with me as I sat on my porch by asking “Will you talk to me?” “Bill later thanked me for not just looking through him.”
I have asked this question to people a lot and, you know what, no one has ever said, “Gosh, I don’t know.”
People have said, “Oh, everyone will have a different answer to that” “True, what’s yours?”
Some people talk about their faith, “We just need to trust that God has a plan.”
Some talk about wanting or expecting less or being grateful for what you have.
The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” comes up a lot, as does “Love one another.”
But no one says, “I haven’t got a clue” They just give me their answer.
My survey sample is biased. I ask the question of talkers and perhaps talkers are loathe to say they don’t know. Some do say, “Let me think about that.” But I’ve never had to wait more than fifteen seconds.
It seems to me that if everyone has an answer, the secret of life isn’t really very secret. We may be wrong. We may each only have a piece of it. We may not be doing what we believe we should be, but mostly we do have an idea.
“What is the secret of life?”
The answer
This woman told me her name, but the name has long since faded away. Let’s call her Rose. Rose did not hesitate one second,
“Oh that’s easy. I tell it to my grandchildren all the time.
Life is about choices. You choose to:
Love NOT hate
Learn NOT “know” (I tell the kids ‘every time you say I Know you miss an opportunity to learn.) and
Laugh NOT whine (I tell them when you laugh you make my heart sing; when you whine it’s like putting my ears by the wheels of a truck. ‘ isn’t it better to surround yourself with singing hearts – better than truck wheels?’)”
The bus pulled into Port Authority and I stepped back to allow her off the bus, which she did whining ever-so-slightly about her back. “It’s tough to sit. Who would think it would be hard to sit?”
But one person’s whining is another’s “God-given right to complain.”
Rose, like most people I ask, didn’t turn the question around to me. In fairness, we didn’t really have time for more discussion and I like her answer anyway.
My own answers to this question vary a lot by what is going on in my life “Work less – have more fun” “Take care of those less fortunate.” “Be grateful.” “Love those close to you and some who are not so close.” The answers vary, but I am never without an answer. I guess I’m a talker, too.
So is it really a secret of life? Maybe not. Maybe we just don’t think enough about how to be, how to work, love and live wisely. Maybe we think or even know,. . . but don’t do.
But we can learn; we can follow Rose’s advice to her grandchildren, chose to Love, Learn, and Laugh. It would make for a better world.
And that’s not a secret.
In the 1970s, Chris Argyris, a professor at the Harvard Business School posited the ladder of inference to explain how humans process data, come to conclusions, and solidify those conclusions into beliefs.
