Happiness Is Fleeting

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

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

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

Happiness is fleeting
And suffering requires a sustaining meaning
They know, happiness is fleeting
And that suffering requires a sustaining meaning

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 born 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