To Peel or Not to Peel

Quoting Mr. Harris, again:

The personality of a man is not an apple to be polished, but a banana to be peeled. And the reason we remain so far from one another, the reason we neither communicate nor interact in any real way, is that most of us spend our lives in polishing rather than peeling.

Man's lifelong task is simply one, but it is not simple: to remove the discrepancy between his outer self and his inner self, to get rid of the "persona" that divides his authentic self from the world. This persona is like the peeling on a banana: it is something built up to protect from bruises and injury. It is not the real person, but sometimes (if the fear of injury remains too great) it becomes a lifelong substitute for the person.

The "authentic personality" knows that he is like a banana, and knows that only as he peels himself down to his individuated self can he reach out and make contact with his fellows by what Father Goldbrunner calls "the sheer maturity of his humanity." Only when he himself is detached from his defensive armoring can he then awaken a true response in his dialog with others.

Most of us, however, think in terms of the apple, not the banana. We spend our lives in shining the surface, in making it rosy and gleaming, in perfecting the "image." But the image is not the apple, which may be wormy and rotten to the taste.

Almost everything in modern life is devoted to the polishing process, and little to the peeling process. It is the surface personality that we work on -- the appearance, the clothes, the manners, the geniality. In short, the salesmanship: we are selling the package, not the product.

There is a vast disparity between our outer and inner selves; in many of us, the real person never comes to life at all, never reveals itself, never knows itself. It lives through its functions, it lives as a type, a response to an environment, and dies without ever having found it's true existence. This, and not unhappiness, is the tragedy of life; this, and not "selfishness," is what causes human misery.

So long as we live behind the peeling, we can have no genuine encounter with the world. So long as we go on polishing, we sacrifice the substance for the image -- until, at last, there is no substance left. What is all the good of our "individualism," if it means merely the freedom to be like everybody else, the liberty to remain secure within the peeling?

~ End Quote

Aphorist

Recently, while searching the Internet for quotations, I stumbled upon one in particular that made me think. It also made me check out other quotes by the same individual, which is not always the case.

The writer’s name was Sydney J. Harris. Journalist, drama critic, teacher, lecturer, he wrote and wrote and wrote. Now, decades later, I think I’d like to read and read and read. Surely, I will not agree with all he has to say, but I could write a blog on each of the following aphorisms, I think. So interesting!

I offer you, Mr. Harris:

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong".
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.
There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say "I lost it."

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, "Why not?" and the other, "Why bother?"

An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.

The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.

As we grow older, we should learn that these are two quite different things. Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters. We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable.

The last few are my favorites. ;-)


~ End Quote