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AAK: Why did you choose to write this particular
book at this particular time – in your own
life as well as that of society at
large?
HK: I found my subject
matter for this book, as I find all my themes, by
listening to people’s fears and complaints and
identifying which ones I find myself struggling with
as well. I ran into a lot of people—neighbors
and people in the news—who seemed desperate to
do something to leave their mark on the world. It
could be something good—an invention, a
medical breakthrough; it could be something
horrible—a crime that would put them in the
headlines; or it could be something
silly—like getting into The Guinness Book of
World Records. Whatever it was, it was better than
being unknown and anonymous.
And then, of
course, I was writing this book the year I turned 65
and found myself thinking more about what my life
will have meant when it’s over.
AAK:
You write a lot about Jacob, whom you describe as
perhaps “The most intriguing person in the
Bible.” How does Jacob embody the conflict
between conscience and success?
HK: If
you remember your Sunday School stories, Jacob does
some pretty unpleasant things to get ahead. He
won’t give his hungry twin brother, Esau, a
bowl of soup unless his brother signs over the
birthright, the right to be considered the
first-born. He disguises himself to fool his blind
old father and get the blessing that was intended
for his brother. And at one level, he hates himself
for doing those things. He does them, he wants the
prize, but he dislikes the person he has to be to
get it.
One night, it all comes to a head.
In a few hours he is going to meet his brother for
the first time in twenty years, and he is afraid
that Esau is looking to get even. Jacob is tempted
to run away, to come up with a trick. But this time
he says, "No! I’m tired of being somebody
who lies and hides." He prays to God to give
him the strength to do the right thing. And
that’s when he has his famous wrestling
encounter with the angel, which I interpret as
wrestling with his conscience and for the first time
letting his conscience win.
AAK: You devote
a chapter of your book to the idea of revenge and
getting even. From the character of Hamlet to Dirty
Harry, it is ingrained in many of us that revenge is
not only sweet, but our right. You write,
“The prospect of getting even is hardly worth
what it does to us as people.” How so?
HK: You’re right, the
desire to get even is nearly irresistible, as a lot
of bad habits are nearly irresistible, but we know
how important it is to learn to resist them. When
you feel the urge to get even with someone who has
hurt you, one of two things happen and they’re
both bad. Either you fantasize about getting back
at the other person but never do it, in which case
you feel powerless and the other person isn’t
affected at all. Or else you act on it, and in the
process you lower yourself to his level, you think
less of yourself afterward, you may damage your
reputation and you may even get in trouble with the
law.
So what can you do instead? You can
realize that revenge is not about hurting someone as
he has hurt you. It’s about reclaiming power
after someone has made you feel powerless. You can
reclaim power by maintaining your integrity and
letting the authorities handle it for you. Or you
can reclaim power by being strong enough to rise
above it, to walk away not out of fear or
helplessness but out of strength and dignity. It
has been said that getting into an argument with a
boorish person is like mudwrestling with a
pig—you’ll both get filthy but the pig
will enjoy it.
AAK: You discuss a recent
trend in American legal circles known as
“restorative justice.” What is that and
how does it promote healing?
HK:
Restorative Justice is something I’ve just
become aware of. I don’t know a whole lot
about it, but what I do know, I find very
attractive. First, it focuses less on punishing the
criminal—what we know as Retributive
Justice—and more on making the victim whole.
I’ve had victims of rapes and muggings
complain to me "Why is it, ‘The State
versus…’ when I’m the one who was
violated?" The first priority of Restorative
Justice is to make the victim whole, by giving her a
sense of power and dignity, listening to her story
(as is in South Africa with the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission), trying to replace what
was taken from her financially and psychologically.
Second, it tries to involve the criminal in the
effort to restore the victim, making him see himself
as a member of society and not as an
outcast.
AAK: You write, “In
today’s world so many of our interactions have
become impersonal.” How can we counteract
this trend and the feelings of insignificance it
causes?
HK: You can see some of
the things people are instinctively doing because
the world has become so big and anonymous. They are
defining themselves by sub-groups they belong to, by
religion, by ethnic background, by geographical
region, by sexual orientation. A friend of mine
says, "I tried to believe in the brotherhood of
man, but I couldn’t handle having six billion
brothers. So now I believe in the brotherhood of
Jews and the cousinhood of
man."
I’m not sure this
fragmenting of the American population is a good
idea. What I would rather see people do is find a
community within their community where, as they used
to say on Cheers, "everybody knows your
name." Churches, synagogues, Rotary Clubs,
would be a better way of escaping that anonymity and
friendlessness.
AAK: If, as you say, people
naturally want to be good, why do so many people do
bad things?
HK: People do wrong
things for a lot of reasons. Sometimes they’re
angry. Sometimes they’re scared. But
I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the
main reasons people do things that hurt other people
is their thirst for feeling important, a thirst they
all too often quench by exercising power over
others.
My wife and I recently returned from
a trip to Eastern Europe, where we visited the towns
where our parents were born. While we were there, we
saw the sites of Nazi massacres of Jews and other
innocent victims. What makes a decent, church-going
man become a Nazi? It has been suggested that these
were people who were raised to follow orders, and
they were just following orders. But the stories we
hears of Nazi brutality was more than just following
orders. There was too much enthusiasm, too much
sadistic glee in what they did. I believe what they
were responding to, and these were often people who
were inconspicuous, even ineffective in their
civilian lives, was the opportunity to dominate
another person, to play God with the power of life
and death. It’s a terrifying thing to realize
how addictive that feeling of power over another
person can be. That’s why men beat up their
wives and muggers attack innocent passers-by. I
believe that if we could find other ways for people
to feel significant, a lot of that random violence
would stop.
AAK: You write, “one of
the saddest commentaries on American life is that we
have made is so hard for men to have male
friends.” Why do you think this is so, and
how does it impact society as a
whole?
HK: Whether it’s
biologically innate or culturally imposed, I think
the scholar Carol Gilligan is right when she notes
that girls growing up tend to have best friends, as
if they were rehearsing for marriage, and boys
growing up tend to play competitive games as if they
were rehearsing for the business world. Men are
taught to see other men as prospective rivals. They
will cooperate with them, they will join them for
shared experiences at work or for fishing or
football. But they will be reluctant to open up and
share their fears and weaknesses with another man. I
suspect a lot of extramarital affairs are not the
result of men looking for sex but of men looking for
closeness.
AAK: Many women struggle with
seeing themselves as successful both professionally
and personally, especially those choosing between a
career and fulltime motherhood. How do you advise
those women?
HK: I have a friend
who says, "Women can have it all, they just
can’t have it all at the same time." She
calls it sequencing. Advance your career, then take
time off to have a family. Or raise your kids first
and, when they’re old enough, go to work.
Will it limit your advancement in your profession?
Probably. But one of the most important things
I’m trying to say in my book is that raising
and shaping a family and filling a home with love
has more of an impact on the world than 90% of
business people will ever have. It is so wrong for
women who have stayed home to feel that
they’ve done nothing with their lives.
They’ve done the most important
things.
AAK: You talk about
“generativity.” What is that and why is
it so important?
HK:
"Generativity" is a term I found in the
writings of Erik Erikson. I don’t know if it
originated with him. It means that as you approach
the last part of your life, you think less about
yourself – what hurts, who has or hasn’t
called you – and you think more about what
kind of world you’ll be leaving to the next
generation. And the beautiful thing about
generativity is that, even if it doesn’t
change the world, it is the best cure for those
teenagers and elderly people who feel ignored and
insignificant. Don’t wait for people to reach
out to you; you be the one who reaches
out.
AAK: So many people seem conditioned to
define their success by how much money they make, or
by their fame--highly visible, flashy things. Yet
it is often the smallest, most ordinary daily acts
of kindness and friendship that are truly important.
How do you go about convincing people of
that?
HK: Ask yourself what you
would rather have on your tombstone :
"Ruthlessly Effective CEO" or
"Beloved Husband and Father,” and act
accordingly. Ask yourself, When I look back on my
life as Jacob does at the end of the Book of
Genesis, what will I be most proud of? In
Jacob’s case, it wasn’t the successful
business ventures, though there were a lot of them.
It was the knowledge that God approved of the kind
of person he had grown to be, and the memory that he
once knew what it felt like to love somebody.
Everything else faded, those two things
remained.
AAK: Recently, many books on
World War II--especially The Greatest Generation,
have become immensely popular. Some argue that this
is due to a sense many people have that we no longer
live in an age of great heroes or events, that it is
harder to live a life that matters. How would you
respond to that?
HK: What is
striking about so many people’s war memories
is that what they remember is so
terrible—crawling through mud, seeing friends
killed next to you—but they are so proud of
those memories because they know they were making a
difference to the world. The philosopher William
James tried to come up with a "moral equivalent
of war," a way for people to feel heroic and
noble without having to kill each other, but he
never quite managed. I would suggest that the moral
equivalent of changing the world by defeating the
forces of evil might be changing the world for the
better by fashioning a climate of compassion,
decency, and sharing, instead of trying to outdo.
Let fighting the evils of bigotry, racial hatred,
and economic injustice be our generation’s
equivalent of going to war against the
Nazis.
AAK: People who call themselves
“religious” or “spiritual”
represent a wide range of people. Are the issues
you discuss and advice you give in Living a Life
That Matters common to all?
HK:
Sure they are. I don’t start with
religion’s answers and say to people,
"Here is the truth." I start with
people’s questions, people’s pain and
confusion, and I say to them, "I’d like
to help you. Might there be something in the
accumulated wisdom of past generations that can give
us a clue as to how to help?" And we discover
that human nature, human hopes and fears,
haven’t really changed that much across the
generations.
AAK: This year marks the 20th
anniversary of When Bad Things Happen To Good
People, your book that is in millions of
households in america. How do you feel about the
enduring success of that book?
HK: It is amazing, isn’t
it? Would you believe that two or three times every
week I pause and reflect on it, asking myself,
"Did this really happen to me?" My little
book has changed the way people respond to tragedy
in this country. And for me, it’s the proof of
God—not of the existence of God but of the
goodness of God. When biology and genetics decreed
that our son would die young, God showed me how to
redeem his death from being an insignificant
statistic and turn it into something that would heal
millions of souls.
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