November 2021
Alan Paton finds himself “no longer able to aspire to the highest with one part of himself and to deny it with another.” It’s tempting for most people to identify with that problem, believing that they too strive towards the highest but are too weak to reach it, and so they torture themselves with guilt. It’s a trap easy to fall into.
The fact is that most people want pleasure and happiness that is continuous, perfect, and permanent (as Spinoza would say), but of course that is impossible to attain. Their attempts and failures are obvious to themselves and everyone, so they feel shame and guilt. When they hear Alan Paton’s words, they think they are suffering from the same problem he suffers from. They are not.
Rather, their problem is how to control and moderate their desire for happiness in such a way that it does not lose its essence, its sweetness. It’s not easy to do that, but as the current Dalai Lama says, it is your duty to be happy.
Paton is like all other missionaries, protestant and Catholic alike, passionate to convert the “heathen” to their own beliefs. They passionately defend the rights and dignity of those they seek to convert, but never (or rarely) marry one. It’s a deep sort of hypocrisy they torture themselves with; they “cannot live like that.”