The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

by David Brooks

What most people seek in life, especially when young, is not happiness but an intensity that reaches into the core. We want to be involved in some important pursuit that involves hardship and is worthy of that hardship. The mentors who really lodge in the mind are the ones who were hard on us—or at least were hard on themselves and set the right example—not the ones who were easy on us. They are the ones who balanced unstinting love with high standards and relentless demands on behalf of something they took seriously. We think we want ease and comfort, and of course we do from time to time, but there is something inside us that longs for some calling that requires dedication and sacrifice. In this way, a lot of what mentors do is to teach us what excellence looks like, day by day. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “Moral education is impossible without the habitual vision of greatness.”