Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. Let’s make 2020 a better year in America. I wonder what that would look like.

Here are a few suggestions.

I ask everyone who is listening to start the year by reading the Constitution of the United States. This takes about an hour. It is universally available free. While you are at it, read the House of Representatives Impeachment Report or at least a solid summary of it. And also read the transcript of President Trump’s July 25, 2019, telephone conversation with the new Ukrainian president. It turns out that the vast majority of those who wear Read the Transcript t-shirts have not bothered to, well, read the transcript. We are going to need to know what we are talking about in what is going to be one of the most divisive political years of our history.

But don’t let the chaos and madness of the national political crisis get in the way of your pursuit of happiness and enlightenment in 2020.

I urge you all to read five classic works of literature in 2020. Like Jefferson I am happy to make recommendations. Here are five that I intend to read: One classic--Ovid’s Metamorphoses; one play by Shakespeare—I’m choosing Love’s Labours Lost; one work of the Enlightenment—Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws; the greatest long poem in the English language—Paradise Lost; and one book by Mark Twain that I have never read, his Joan of Arc. You choose your own, of course. If you are looking for recommendations, try Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Thoreau’s Walden, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Dickens’ Great Expectations, and George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss.

I urge you to host five dinner parties this year, or six, if you want to schedule one every two months. Choose your guests carefully. Potluck is fine if you are too busy to do all the work yourself, or you don’t want to incur the whole cost. Make the food relatively simple, so that it doesn’t get in the way of the discourse. Serve French wine (it’s more affordable than you might think). Pick a topic for each dinner. Work at conversational artistry—people question each other more than they hold forth, each conversationalist takes the others seriously, the conversation builds on itself, harmony is the rule, try to use language in a careful and rich way. President Jefferson accomplished more by way of his thrice-weekly White House dinners for 10-12 individuals than by any other method of political persuasion.

Get out into nature. Hike in a National Forest, sleep in a national park, preferably on the ground. Sit around a campfire. Gaze at the stars. Celebrate one of the things that America does so right—its outdoor recreation system. Some of the best conversations you will ever have occur while hiking long distances together. To his nephew Peter Carr, Jefferson wrote, Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

Reach out to your friends, particularly those you have neglected or let slip away. Friendship is the highest form of human relationship, I believe. The slightest authentic gesture towards someone you care about who has not heard from you for a while will be regarded as manna by the recipient. If every day you try to reach out to someone in an unnecessary way—just a quick phone call or a text or, better yet, a handwritten note or letter, you will find that this gesture unleashes a world of joy and goodwill. It is important to reach out to someone you have been in a misunderstanding with—who has slipped away, whom you have driven away—and seek repair and harmony. Jefferson said, “Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. ... And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.” Wordsworth wrote that the best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” I called an old secretary of mine the other day, from thirty-five years ago. It made her day, possibly her month, because someone who was long lost to her reached out.

Give things away. The art of gift giving is not expense or extravagance but thoughtfulness. I read a book about this a few years ago and it changed the way I go about life. When someone praises something I have—a tie, a book, an object, a recipe—I try to give it to them, if possible, right away. Obviously, you don’t give away your new Jeep Wrangler, your SLR camera, or your dining room table, but the simple and direct gesture of saying, “Thank you. I’d like you to have it,” does wonders in life. And it helps us in two other ways. It teaches the principle of non-attachment to material things, which is one of Henry David Thoreau’s principles, and it helps us to downsize. We all need that. You should try in the next twelve months to reduce the number of objects you own, particularly those you merely store away somewhere in the garage or a storage locker. Jefferson had a genius for selecting and delivering gifts at just the right time. He maintained this lovely habit even when—as almost always—he was insolvent. His favorite granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge wrote, "Our Grandfather seemed to read our hearts, to see our invisible wishes. My Bible came from him, my Shakespeare, my first writing table, my first Leghorn Hat, my first silk dress.” Try giving things away to those who admire them. It’s a deeply satisfying experience.

Practice what Jefferson called “Artificial Good Humor.” Be civil when other person is rude—in a grocery line, at a four way stop, on an airplane, at the DMV. Treat everyone better than they deserve. Jefferson said when angry count to ten, when very angry count to 100. Whenever I practice the master’s artificial good humor, I find that my life improves. He said that taking on this discipline accomplishes two things; first, what is at first artificial soon becomes second nature, which he said is as good as having natural good humor; and being civil and generous to those who have affronted you is a gentle form of modeling and shaming at the same time. My friend Sheila Schafer said there is a third reason. When I was angry at someone who cut me off on the highway once, she said, “How do you know that person didn’t just get laid off, or filed for divorce, or is rushing to be by a sick child? Probably not, but if you always look at it that way, you will be much happier.”

And finally, learn something really new this year. Take up French or Spanish. Learn to strum the guitar. Take a ceramics class. Prepare to run a marathon. Join a chess club. Take a drawing class. Learn to juggle four oranges. Try to master the art of Thai curries or Szechwan Chinese cooking. Brew some beer. Take a course in sign language. Learn to shoot a bow and arrow with some accuracy. Climb Mount Whitney. I am always so inspired when I remember that the political essayist and philosopher I.F. Stone learned ancient Greek in his 70s so that he could read Plato in the original and write a book about the Trial of Socrates. You know those high-end square cards you buy in bookstores and specialty shops that have quotations on the front from Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Helen Keller. They are almost all great, but maybe my favorite says: What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” The quotation seems to be by the spiritual guru Robert Schuller. The answer is, do that, try that, make a run at that.

I hope you will ask yourself that on New Year’s Day. Remember, anything that requires a lot of expensive new gear is probably a mistake. The list of things I would attempt if I knew I could not fail is very long, but here are three. I would learn to draw. I would write a book that rocked the world. I would repeat the journalist Eric Sevareid’s canoe journey from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Hudson Bay.

From all of us here at the Thomas Jefferson Hour, I wish you happy holidays and the best, most productive, most friendly and loving new year of your life.

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