The Second Mountain

Happiness vs. Joy.

That’s from the Introduction in which we get an overview of what the first mountain looks like (think: pursuit of normal success, wealth, and… happiness) and what the second mountain is all about (transcending the self and experiencing deep, abiding joy as a by-product of commitments to something bigger than yourself).

We’ll talk about the two mountains and how to climb the second via commitments in a moment. First, let’s talk about joy. David walks us through what he sees as the different levels of joy. The highest level of joy is what he calls “moral joy.” Whereas the prior levels offer powerful yet fleeting experiences of joy, “moral joy has an extra feature. It can become permanent.”

As I read his take on the subject I thought of Aristotle, Abraham Maslow and Martin Seligman—all of whom, I think, reflect on the same truth in terms of “happiness” vs. “joy.”

First, we have Maslow. He’s best known for his hierarchy of needs and his concept of the “self-actualizing” individual. We often talk about his line that “What one can be, one must be.”

But… We need to remember that actualizing our selves is NOT the last stage of development. We actualize ourselves so we can go BEYOND ourselves. Which is why SELF-TRANSCENDENCE is the highest stage of development. The first mountain vs. the second mountain. We could say that one leads to happiness. The other to moral joy.

Then we have Martin Seligman. As we’ve discussed, Seligman helped launch the positive psychology movement. His first book of that era was called Authentic Happiness. Then he moved beyond that to a broader conception of well-being that he called Flourish.

As we’ve discussed countless times, “flourish” is a word we can use to describe Aristotle’s word for the highest good in life: eudaimonia. And, how do we achieve eudaimonia? By committing to a deeply moral life in which virtue is our ultimate target. The by-product of a well-lived life (aka one focused on virtue in service to others)? Moral joy.

Which leads us back to David. I loved his distinction between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues” in The Road to Character. As he explains in this book, he no longer believes that “character building is like going to the gym: You do your exercises and build up your honesty, courage, integrity, and grit.” He says: “I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away.” And, he tells us that “Character is a good thing to have, and there’s a lot to be learned on the road to character. But there’s a better thing to have—moral joy. And that serenity arrives as you come closer to embodying perfect love.”

I agree. Only… I’d frame it in a slightly different, “yes, and…” progression.

I think that character building IS like going to the gym. With one distinction: We’re not going to the gym for ourselves per se (/the equivalent of snapping a six-pack selfie for Instagram). We’re going to the gym (and training hard!) to have (heroic) STRENGTH FOR TWO.

We KNOW that the ultimate end is not our own character development for its own sake but character development SUCH THAT we can serve as profoundly as possible and have the necessary strength to give ourselves most fully to the world.

Which leads us to our oft-repeated: Optimize = Optimus = Best = Eudaimon = HERO. <- We do the hard work to have strength for two so we can give ourselves to the world. Period. Repeat. Enter: Moral (Eudaimonic!) Joy.

P.S. David was deeply inspired by Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward. Check out our Notes on his *amazing* book for the importance of creating a strong ego-container to hold all the Goodness.

That’s from Chapter 7: “The Committed Life.”

Want to successfully navigate the second mountain and experience abiding moral joy? COMMIT.

Specifically, David tells us we need to move beyond freedom from into that higher kind of freedom known as freedom to as we commit to FOUR things: 1. Vocation + 2. Marriage + 3. Philosophy and Faith + 4. Community.

After establishing “The Two Mountains” in Part I, each of those four commitments gets its own section. Let’s explore each in a little more depth as we remember: “On the second mountain it is your chains that set you free.”

But… First: Here’s some more wisdom from David on the power of commitment as a vehicle to forge character: “Gradually the big loves overshadow the small ones: Why would I spend my weekends playing golf when I could spend my weekends playing ball with my children? In my experience, people repress bad desires only when they are able to turn their attention to a better desire. When you’re deep in a commitment, the distinction between altruism and selfishness begins to fade away. When you serve your child it feels like you are serving a piece of yourself. That disposition to good is what having good character is all about.

In this way, moral formation is not individual; it is relational. Character is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. Character emerges from our commitments. If you want to inculcate character in someone else, teach them how to form commitments—temporary ones in childhood, provisional ones in youth, permanent ones in adulthood. Commitments are the school for moral formation. When your life is defined by fervent commitments, you are on the second mountain.”

P.S. Our recent Note on Jocko Willink’s manifesto comes to mind: Discipline Equals Freedom.

That’s from the first (of five) chapters in Part II on Vocation: “What Vocation Looks Like.”

Viktor Frankl is the quintessential exemplar in playing our roles well—which is why we talk about him so often. As Frankl describes in Man’s Search for Meaning, when he was thrown into a concentration camp he realized that: “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” Then he answered that call from life and served. Profoundly.

David ends that first chapter on Vocation with this: “The summons to vocation is a very holy thing. It feels mystical, like a call from deep to deep. But then the messy way it happens in actual lives doesn’t feel holy at all; just confusing and screwed up.” ← Which is why he spends the next few chapters describing how vocations are found and grown.

He references our beloved scholar of moral development and purpose, William Damon, a number of times (in fact, Damon is probably the most cited scholar in the book). Check out our Notes on The Path to Purpose, The Power of Ideals and Noble Purpose for more.

He also references Robert Greene and his brilliant book Mastery as he advises us: “That may be fine if you’re willing to settle for something meager like a career. But if you are trying to discern your vocation, the right question is not What am I good at? It’s the harder questions: What am I motivated to do? What activity do I love so much that I’m going to keep getting better at it for the next many decades? What do I desire so much that it captures me at the depth of my being? In choosing a vocation, it’s precisely wrong to say that talent should trump interest. Interest multiplies talent and is in most cases more important than talent. The crucial terrain to be explored in any vocation search is the terrain of your heart and soul, your long-term motivation. Knowledge is plentiful, motivation is scarce.

Robert Greene gets at the core truth in his book Mastery: ‘Your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work. If you go at your work with half a heart, it will show in lackluster results and in the laggard way in which you reach the end.'”

P.S. We can’t wrap up this section without referencing William Damon’s wisdom from Noble Purpose where he tells us: “The idea of a ‘calling’ is an ancient notion with religious roots. Max Weber wrote that a calling is a ‘task set by God.’ All individuals have their own particular callings, reflecting three realities: (1) their own God-given abilities; (2) the world’s need for the services their callings provide; and (3) their enjoyment in serving society and God in their own special ways. Much like any noble purpose, a calling is both meaningful to the self and important to the world beyond the self. Christian theologian Frederick Buechner writes, ‘The kind of work God usually calls you to do is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. . . . The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.'”

P.P.S. Here’s another great Note you may enjoy in committing to your vocation: The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope. Plus: You might enjoy Purpose 101.

That’s from the fifth chapter in Part III: “Marriage: The School You Build Together.” One of the essential lessons of that school? “The art of recommitment.”

As we’ve discussed, it’s relatively easy to “fall” in love. It’s MUCH more challenging to STAND in love. And, we can only do that by RECOMMITTING. Again and again and again.

David discusses his own failures in his first marriage, while celebrating the lessons learned in his second. He tells us: “I know what it’s like to fail here. Recommitment involves going against yourself. But life is defined by the moments we’re asked to go against ourselves. Marriage, like all commitments, isn’t there to make you happy; it is there to make you grow.”

Of course, as David points out, all relationships have their own idiosyncratic challenges and destinies. But, for those of us who are married, let’s remember that, when we exchanged our sacred vows, we said, “I DO.” Not, “I’ll try.”

Here’s to the commitment (and recommitments!) required to build our schools together.

P.S. In this section, David references Jon Gottman—”the dean of marriage scholars.” He tells us: “Happy marriages are based on deep friendship. By this I mean mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company.” Check out our Notes on The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work for more of his wisdom.

That’s from Part IV on Philosophy and Faith in which David walks us through his own spiritual process and gives us some tips on how to cultivate a deeper commitment to our own relationship to our “Philosophy and Faith.”

As you might have noticed, we’re revisited the whole “gym” chat from our first Idea. I think THIS captures the paradoxical and complex dance between our little self and our BIG SELF quite well.

That particular passage is from a chapter called “Ramps and Walls” in which David discusses obstacles to (“Walls”) and supportive structures for (“Ramps”) our faith/philosophy commitment process. Of course, check out the book for more. For now: The top three Ramps? Ritual + “Unabashed faith” + prayer.

That’s from the final chapter of the book (and Part V on the fourth commitment to Community) called “Conclusion: The Relationalist Manifesto.”

The chapter kicks off with this recap: “The first mountain is the individualist worldview, which puts the desires of the ego at the center. The second mountain is what you might call the relationalist worldview, which puts relation, commitment, and the desires of the heart and soul at the center. My core argument has been that we have overdone it with the individualist worldview. By conceiving of ourselves mostly as autonomous selves, we’ve torn our society to shreds, opened up division and tribalism, come to worship individual status and self-sufficiency, and covered over what is most beautiful in each human heart and soul.”

The antidote to hyper-individualism? Making a commitment to others—dedicating our ENTIRE lives (and every moment in them) to becoming the best versions of ourselves such that we can most powerfully serve our families and communities and world.

Optimize = Optimus = Best = Eudaimon = Hero = YOU and me and all of us. Together. Today.