Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [11]
Looking at the evidence, the answer seems to be—emphatically not! Despite increasing material wealth, Americans are not happier. Research consistently shows that the factors that most contribute to an individual’s happiness include spending time with family and close friends, hobbies, and contributing to the community, and that the thing that people most hate is spending time in traffic.18 Yet people keep making choices that result in them spending more time at work and in traffic and less time with family and friends! But still they wait, thinking that someday, somehow, things will get better. They are waiting for a better job, a promotion, a new office, a new car, or maybe just a bigger television or fancier smartphone—something new to relieve the stress, disharmony, and boredom they have created in their own lives through their choices. These people are stuck in, as Dr. Seuss says, “a most useless place”:
The Waiting Place . . . for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go / or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go / or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No / or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite / or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night / or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break / or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting. (Places)
Socrates and Seuss would agree that, when someone gets stuck waiting like this, something has gone fundamentally wrong with his way of thinking about “the most important matters” in life. Someday, he says to himself, I’ll be happy! The problem is that someday never comes, and he doesn’t have the courage or imagination to try something different. He needs to reexamine what he really values and what really makes him happy rather than just accepting the same old ideas about what he ought to value. Perhaps we need to leave the old, well-worn paths behind, and, like Seuss’s protagonist, “head straight out of town!” (Places)
The Places You’ll Go: The Journey of Life
You’ll look up and down streets. Look ’em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.
And you may not find any you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. (Places)
If, as Dr. Seuss suggests, life is a journey, a fantastical adventure or game, how do we decide where to go, what paths to take? Once we strike out away from the well-worn paths of conventional wisdom—once we challenge what “everyone” believes and start asking questions—we’ll find that there are no easy answers. So how do we deal with what life gives us so that we can live the good and happy lives that we want?
According to Dr. Seuss, the answer is clear: You have brains in your head, feet in your shoes, so you need to use them and do the best you can with what life gives you. In other words, humans are rational beings, and we need to use our rational capacities to make the best decisions we can. In Plato’s Crito, as Socrates is facing a difficult decision about whether or not to escape from prison and avoid his execution, he tells his friend Crito: “We must therefore examine whether we should act this way or not, as not only now but at all times I am the kind of man who listens to nothing within me but the argument that on reflection seems best to me.”19 Socrates faces an ethical dilemma. If he escapes from prison, he’ll be breaking the law and betraying all that he’s stood for in his life. But if he stays, he’ll be executed and leave his children without a father to care