Posted 8/20/2012

Nature versus Nurture is always a hot topic. My comments on this essay are below. See what you think.

By Fulton Oursler

Condensed from Cosmopolitan, February 1952

Copied verbatim from The Keys to Happiness, published by Reader’s Digest

The Hardest Lesson

Some psychologists believe that character is fixed in childhood and can never be changed. But my friend Dr. Edwin declares that any man who wants to can change himself at any age—if he has the courage. To illustrate, he tells about Frank Dudley.

Dudley, born poor, put himself and his younger brother through college. Then, on sheer nerve, he formed his own advertising agency in New York and earned a modest fortune. One day Dudley checked in at a Boston hotel, never dreaming that three brief telephone calls were about to change his life.

First he called his brother’s home and asked his sister-in-law Agnes, if she and his brother could have dinner him.

“No, thanks,” Agnes said briskly. “Eddie has a business appointment tonight, and I’m going to be busy, too. When he calls, though, I’ll tell him to give you a ring.”

Was there a faintly acrid undertone in her voice? Shrugging off the suspicion, Dudley called an old college friend and asked him to join him at dinner. His friend’s answer made Dudley reel: “We’re going to the party Eddie and Agnes are giving tonight. I’ll see you there!”

Bewildered, Dudley had scarcely replaced the receiver when the telephone rang.

“Frank? This is Eddie. How are you? Sorry I’m tied up tonight. How about lunch tomorrow?” Scarcely knowing what he said, the older man mumbled assent.

Since high school days, when both of their parents had died, Frank had been father and brother to Eddie. Naturally they had not been so close since Eddie’s marriage. But never once had the older brother betrayed his disappointment in the match. Agnes could never be an intellectual companion for Eddie, who was a scholar, a teacher of history. Nevertheless, Frank had always treated his sister-in-law with tender gusto.

Why had they lied to him? After a sleepless night he drove to his brother’s house.

When Agnes opened the door, he blurted out: “Why didn’t you and Eddie invite me last night?”

“Frank, I’m terribly sorry. Eddie wanted to ask you, but I told him I’d rather not have the party. You’d have ruined everything.”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Because it’s true, Frank. Why do you suppose we ever came to Boston except to get away by ourselves? You hurt Eddie every time you come around. You’re the big successful man who has to impress everybody. You top everything Eddie says, every opinion he expresses, every story he tries to tell; you contradict him and make him look foolish. Well, last night the president of the college was coming to dinner. We hope Eddie’s going to be promoted. Why should you take the spotlight and spoil everything? That’s why I put my foot down. I’ve always known what you really think of me. But there’s one thing I can tell you: I try to make Eddie happy and that’s more than you ever do!”

“I’m not like that at all,” Dudley cried.

“Aren’t you thought?” Agnes said miserably. “You ought to get wise to yourself.”

Eventually Dudley appeared in the office of his friend Dr. Edwin.

“I can’t get this thing out of my mind, and I can’t decide what to do,” said Dudley. “That woman is my mortal enemy. I won’t let her separate Eddie and me. There must be a solution.”

Dr. Edwin looked at his friend. “There is,” he declared flatly. “But you won’t like it. Your sister-in-law gave you the best possible advice when she told you to get wise to yourself. Like everybody else, You are not one person but three: the man you think you are, the man other people think you are—and the man you really are. Generally the last one is the man nobody knows. Why not make his acquaintance? It may change your whole life.”

A gaunt look settled on Dudley’s troubled face. “How do you I start?” he asked finally.

“Why don’t you play the game I call spiritual solitaire?” the doctor suggested. “Listen to yourself. Weigh your thoughts and impulses before speaking or acting.”

That night Dudley went to dinner with several men he knew. Presently one of the group began to tell a joke. Dudley had heard the story before, and his eyes wandered away. He thought of another yarn, much funnier than this one, which he meant to tell the moment the narrator finished.

With a jolt, he remembered Dr. Edwin’s game. And suddenly the words of Agnes resounded in his mind: “You top everything Eddie says, every story he tries to tell.”

As a shout of laughter followed the story, Dudley blurted out, “Gosh, that’s a good one! And how magnificently you told it!”

The storyteller turned to him with a grateful glance.

This little experience was the beginning of Dudley’s adventure with himself. At lunch with a business associate the next day he learned that a certain man wanted to be elected vice-president of a trade association. “That won’t be easy,” Dudley objected.

“Why not?”

Dudley hesitated. He was learning to make hesitation a habit. He had intended to reveal how often the association’s directors came to him for advice; he meant to hold forth, to expound—

Again, Agnes’s voice echoed in his memory: “You’re the big successful man who has to impress everybody.”

“That man,” he stammered, “is too good for vice-president. He’d make a great president.”

“Dudley,” cried the other with joy,” you talk like a statesman! He’s my closest friend, and with your help we can put him over.”

Dudley was inwardly astonished at the meanness he had come so close to committing. And why? Simply because he wanted people to think how important he was.

There were many such discoveries. It startled him to detect the gossip with which he spiced conversation, the little detractions his tongue uttered against men whom he called friends. He found, to his horror, that he was capable of rejoicing over one man’s misfortune and grieving over another’s success. The more he learned about himself, the easier it was to forgive others.

Two weeks later he returned to Dr. Edwin, a package under one arm, and related his discoveries.

“What about your brother’s wife? Are you still angry with her?”

“Doctor, I am so sore at myself I haven’t room to be sore at anybody else. And I’m on my way to Boston. In this package is my young nephew’s birthday present. I was going to buy him a $200 camera, until I realized that would be more expensive than anything his father could give him. This is something no money could buy for him.”

At his brother’s door Agnes looked at him uncertainly. Presently he sat with Eddie Jr., in the living room, the gift package opened on his knees. It was a stout black book; the worn cover had no title.

“This scrapbook,” Dudley began, “Is something I’ve been keeping for years. It’s filled with things about your father: clippings from the sports pages when he was high school swimming champion; snapshots; and letters people wrote me when he was reported missing overseas. Here’s a note about that from my second-best friend in the world: ‘You,’ he says, meaning me, ‘have a brilliant mind, but your brother, Eddie, had a splendor of the heart, and that’s a lot more important.’”

In the silence, as the child read the letter, Agnes turned her back and went to the window.

“Who is your very best friend?” asked Eddie, Jr.

“The lady at the window,” said Dudley. “A good friend tells you the truth. Your mother did that for me when I needed it most, and I can never thank her enough for it.”

Agnes did something for the first time in her life—she put her arms around Dudley and gave him a sister’s kiss.



My thoughts

“Some psychologists believe that character is fixed in childhood and can never be changed. But my friend Dr. Edwin declares that any man who wants to can change himself at any age—if he has the courage.”

I think this kind of change takes more than courage. It takes self-awareness.

I think it takes an external input and the courage to act on it.

A siren.

A wake-up call.

A life-shattering moment.

A transformative moment from which there can be no going back to the way things were (credit to Dr. Soni Simpson).

A comment that can’t be removed from your consciousness.

For me, it was the moment my roommate in college said everyone hated me, including my mom, and that I should do the world a favor and kill myself.

In the story of Frank Dudley, an advertising exec in New York (can you say Madmen?) it is a frank sister-in-law.

After reading the story of Dudley, I realize my college roommate gave me an incredible gift—a gift of self awareness. I gift I didn't want but that I needed.

After years of anger, it pains me to type the words…but here goes... thank you, Sue.