On Tuesday, February 16th Manhattanville’s second annual Castle Conversations kicked off. Castle Conversations is a series where four speakers from different backgrounds come to campus to speak to the local community and students as well. Last year the Castle Conversation kicked off with the lovely Ariana Huffington and this year it kicked off with The New York Times journalist David Brooks.
David Brooks not only writes bi-weekly for The New York Times, but also is a regular analysis on PBS NewsHour as well as NPR’s All Things Considered. He has recently released a book called The Road to Character, where he talks about why selflessness leads to higher success. In the book he tells the story of 10 different characters that help demonstrate how character is developed. The talk of character is what guided his speech as well as the idea of finding your passion.
The first topic he covered was the idea of finding your light. “How do you get to your inner light?” He asked the audience. “Finding that happiness.” Our inner light is found once we find what makes us happy. How do we find what makes us happy? Well, that is for us to figure out. “You can’t decide your calling in life based on logic.” He expressed, looking out into the audience. “It takes falling in love and being deeply devoted.” So in order to find your calling, you need to experience first. You need to find something and fall in love with it, be devoted and you will realize that it’s your life calling.
There was also a brief mention about all the passion people may have for something and want to share it to the world, but we are held back by our jobs. “We have passions we want to give to the world, but we all are in professions that discipline us.” I interpreted this as allowing our creativity to grow rather than our jobs or career choices limit our creativity. A lot of jobs teach you that you have to do things one way, but in reality there is a variety of ways to do things.
He also stressed the idea of a liberal arts education such as one you find at Manhattanville. “The vision of liberal arts is to educate mind, body and soul.” His voiced echoed in the chapel as he spoke to an audience of an estimated two hundred people or possibly even more people. As a proud Manhattanville Valiant, I can say that having a liberal arts education has educated my mind, body and soul in different ways. This is what I feel is important to maintaining a wonderful and healthy life.
David was humorous and made many great jokes to get the audience laughing. “Writing a book doesn’t make you a person of great character.” He said very charismatically as the audience broke out into laughter. It’s always the assumption that if you write a book you’re deep and are filled with such great character. He added a joke about not just sitting at a keyboard and writing. You need to go out and find the story, work into every detail. He also touched on his book The Road to Character a bit throughout his speech. He had mentioned a couple of the characters in the book and how the way they lived their life led them to their life calling.
In the end Q&A, people asked really great questions. One question was “What would be your Freshman year course list for college if you were teaching?” David answered back with an interesting answer of a mix of Shakespeare, Aristotle, Plato and older books that may appear boring to most, but he finds them important to understand. He also had talked about how happiness and how some people live life day by day while others take risks and just live like there is no tomorrow.
I wanted to close off this article with a question he imposed to the audience “In our hearts, of hearts, why are we doing what we’re doing?” It’s a great question to think about day by day especially when we are going through a rough patch. When you wake up, think about why you’re doing what you’re doing. Why are you going to college? Why are you doing the job you do?
Thank you David Brooks from coming to Manhattanville College and for being such a delightful spirit to the start of Castle Conversations.