Credo

October 28, 1993

I have never believed, and still do not, that anyone else could write a creed for me. However, “Aristides,” the quarterly essayist of “The American Scholar,” came very close in his piece in the Autumn 1993 issue, “Nicely Out of It.”

In his usual lively prose, Aristides was denying that he was “with it.” That is, he never embraced the fads and manias of each succeeding decade (50s, 60s, 70s, 80s): the dress, art, music, literature, celebrities, sports, diets and “self-improvement” videos. The entire essay is recommended if you have access to this journal.

But his concluding paragraph echoes with such crystal-clear tones what I sense, believe and aspire to, that I hope you will read it more than once (if you never read anything else in my 1993 “Musings”):

“I prefer being out in the cold with my own well-worn but comfortable out-of-it notions. These include: that there are a number of unchanging ideas – none of them particularly stylish – worth fighting for; that honor is immitigable; that, so, too, is dignity, despite the almost inherent ridiculousness of human beings; that one’s life is a work of art, however badly botched, which can be restored and touched up here and there but not fundamentally changed; that, in connection with this, integrity includes coherence of personality; that elegance, where possible, is very nice, but there are many things more important than style, loyalty and decency among them; that a cello is a finer instrument than an electric guitar; and that a man ought to start out the day with a clean handkerchief. I hope I speak for others who are out of it when I say we take these truths to be self-evident. And, as those of us who are out of it have learned, when it comes to most of the really important truths, no other kind of evidence is usually available.”