Happiness Is Fleeting
[Intro]
Happiness is fleeting
And suffering requires a sustaining meaning
Happiness is fleeting
And suffering requires a sustaining meaning
That place where the meaning and the fact are conjoined
That's the proper place to lecture from
What you wanna do as an academic is tell your students
About something that you've encountered that you've fallen in love with
And to communicate the love that you have for that
And not to say, “Well, you should read this book.”
But to say, “Well, herе's this book, and here's what it can open up for you and this is how it doеs it, this is what you'll gain from it”
There's something in it that's of unbelievable utility, and you have to believe that in order to communicate it
To communicate that commitment you have to beauty and to truth and to literature
It isn't enough to say what they are and to transmit them
It's to manifest yourself as a living part of that tradition
And to show yourself thereby as a model for living out what that tradition represents, and to show that that's so much better than
Like a short-term pleasure seeking nihilism
They're not even in the same conceptual universe
And people are far more open to that, they know already
People know, especially when they're hurt
They know that…
[Chorus]
Happiness is fleeting
And suffering requires a sustaining meaning
They know, happiness is fleeting
And that suffering requires a sustaining meaning
King's Chapel, the people who started it didn't live to see its completion
They were driven by this nobility of transcended vision and they produced these enduring forms
Out of the bloody misery of history
We've erected all this spectacular infrastructure that we're so fortunate to be part of
And none of that gratitude is taught, partly not taught because people have no sense of the absolute catastrophe of history
It's like nasty, brutish, and short
The simplest and most likely social circumstances
Catastrophe punctuated by hell
And to see that not happening in a sustained manner, constantly and to see things improving around us and to be reliable in that manner and then not to be grateful for that
It's an unbelievable combination of ignorance, ingratitude, and willful blindness
And to not instill that sense in young people for them to understand that they are standing on the bones of generations of people who suffered to make this possible
Despite all their errors and brought this forward
[Chorus]
Happiness is fleeting
And suffering requires a sustaining meaning
They know, happiness is fleeting
And that suffering requires a sustaining meaning
We could concentrate on building the future, instead of criticizing the past
You start in the world if you have some wisdom and some humility
By taking the potential that lies dormant in front of you
And interacting with it in the Logos-like manner, with truth and with love
And by transforming that potential into whatever you can create out of it that's good
It won't be small if you do that
You can transform your whole household by transforming your room
You can transform your whole neighborhood, by transforming your house
These things spread very, very rapidly
And that is right there in front of you
People think they're impoverished, that they don't have any opportunity
And the opportunity is hidden from them by their unwillingness to take the steps that are necessary to put what they could put in front of them in order
And to produce the beauty instead of the ugliness, where they could do that
And I don't think there is anything more powerful than that
That works
[Chorus]
Happiness is fleeting
And suffering requires a sustaining meaning
They know, happiness is fleeting
And that suffering requires a sustaining meaning
[Chorus]
Happiness is fleeting
And suffering requires a sustaining meaning
They know, happiness is fleeting
And that suffering requires a sustaining meaning
Everyone who's lived knows that
And so to say, well here's some bon for the suffering and it's profound and deep
And here's what it's meant to me
And here's how you can incorporate it into your life
People are absolutely starving for that, or dying of thirst for that