Delphic Maxim 85: Use what you have

I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.

85. Use what you have

We are plagued by our prosperity. Our fancy entertainment — especially services like Netflix, Stan and all the ‘on-demand’ things — means we live lives of absolute luxury. Often we don’t think so, and there are some who don’t, but seriously: it’s never been easier to find passive entertainment, to switch our minds off and burn hours staring at the idiot box.

This is a tragedy, because some of the greatest joy in our life comes from using the talents and capabilities that we have as clever people.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my friends and I held a writer’s festival in my lounge room. The process is hugely involved: people submit expressions of interest, dream up a topic they want to speak about, construct a talk, a set of slides, and present it to the rest of our friends. And yet, it is unbelievably fun. I think the reason it’s so much fun is because we’re being creative — we’re making use of our skills and imaginative faculties.

There’s this bizarre misconception that any kind of work is a bore, that it can’t be fun. That’s not true — creative work is fun and exciting, it’s rewarding. The same goes for exercise, for taxing and improving our physical condition. If you don’t use it, you lose it, so keeping ourselves fit and healthy is an important part of living.

This maxim is, in a sense, so quintessentially Ancient Greek. The training of the body and the mind was a fundamental part of the culture — the idealised vision of humanity was fit, morally praiseworthy and intellectually rigorous. The virtues were tied to self-improvement. It was — and it still is — a shame for a person to let their natural aptitudes go to waste.

So indulge me a reference to a hero of mine who has just died, Bob Hawke. The fascinating thing about Hawke is that he spent his whole life, his whole career in the union movement and in politics, using all of those capabilities to the fullest extent possible. Hawke was incredibly intelligent, fascinated by and committed to sport, an outstanding moral citizen who loathed racism and cared for everyone, a charismatic leader and speaker, and a man who applied these qualities to the transformation of his country.

Imagine if we would all apply ourselves in the same way — with such energy and commitment, and with such a sense of the power we have to make change in the world, if only we use what we have.

We’re smarter than we think, if we put our minds to it, and stronger than we know, if we put our bodies to work. And most important of all, we are kinder, better, more gracious and caring than we need to be, if we use that moral compass that sits inside all of us.

Vale Bob Hawke.