I recently came across a pithy little book of 35 life tips, written by older baby boomer Charles Murray and addressed to millennials. The book is called The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead, and I disagree with reviewers on Goodreads who dismiss the author as an old white guy hiding behind the ruse of curmudgeonliness (yes, that’s a word!), so he can pontificate from on high.
In fact, I plan to give a copy of the book to each of my children as they head out on their own, because the book neatly sums up what it takes to live a good life, drawing on everything from Aristotle to religious traditions to the movie Groundhog Day.
My favourite tip is number 19: Learn to love rigour. Murray explains the tip in the context of thinking and writing well. A personal opinion isn’t enough to assess excellence in something, he says. To have an informed opinion, you must call on your education in stats, history, literature, art, and so on. In a writing assignment, for example, rigour means discovering all you can on the topic, doing any necessary calculations, exhausting all leads—and not minding the “wasted time” in hunting down those that are dead ends—and developing conclusions. When developing those conclusions, you must want to find out why you might be wrong.
This is being rigourous. Something I plan to keep in mind as I write and edit.
I love rigourous curmudgeons. The world could use a lot more of them. Thanks for posting!