MADE UP

First you’re born
and then you’re made,
made first in the images
of your parents’ ideas,
fashioned according to their tastes
and styles and aspirations
while you’re much made over
and modeled to their designs.

Then comes a time when you take over
the make-over role
beginning to shape your own image
to reflect the manners of friends,
identifying yourself with new ideas
and ideals from a wider world,
or maybe according to your own
soul’s code, unlocking your true identity,
made up from before you were born.

*

FIAT LUX

THE SECRET OF COLLEGE

(Although I have never given a commencement speech or a valedictory address, about this time every year I get the urge to write one. Here’s this year’s.)


I believe that all too few of those students who graduate from college have actually learned the secret of college.

Most graduates remain bemused by the same beguiling reasons that drew them initially to attend college:

1. the presumed guarantee that their possession of a college diploma would parley into a higher level of lifetime earnings
2. the prospect of moving up the social ladder and living among a “better class” of people
3. the promise of enjoying “the best four years of your life” with minimum responsibilities and maximum partying, the last fling of carefree adolescence before the lockdown of adult responsibilities
4. and some other fallacious myths that you can no doubt enumerate for yourself.

But only those true students who “get it” have discovered the simply stated secret of a genuine college education, the object of which is to know, think and perform more and better.

College is about knowing more and knowing better. The subjects of the various “academic disciplines” in college offer you the culled knowledge of “the best that has been thought and said in the world,” in Matthew Arnold’s famous phrase. Why settle for gossip, headlines, tabloid trivia, and hearsay when scholarship has worked to discover and determine the most valuable and dependable knowledge? Become a better scholar.

College is about thinking more and better. In college studies you can follow the model of your professors and mentors who teach you how to read, research, write and converse according to the manners and methods of the disciplines in whose discourses they are expert. Become a better thinker.

College is about practicing and improving your learning and thinking until your level of performance grows proficient, not only in the general skills of academic scholarship and in the acquisition of that general knowledge which befits a person of higher education, but most particularly with respect to your special fields of study, your major and minor subject areas. Become a better performer.

Which is to say: learn, think and act like a true collegian.

*

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis


—e.e. cummings

*

TAUGHT AND CAUGHT

When it comes to learning, some things are better taught, while others are better caught.

Explicit instruction works best for most of the subjects in schools conveyed by means of lesson plans, exercises and tests, such as math, history, or biology.

But for other things, it’s the presence and example of a teacher who is expert and exemplary in such subjects (such as theatrical acting or public speaking or flute playing or versecrafting)—all such doings or performances that produce a learning which students catch by imitation, rather than absorb by instruction. “Do as I do” is the motto of such performative, rather than informative, guides and mentors.

In our “Writing about Human Frontiers” course this semester, I hope that I’ve served you in both capacities, as both instructor and exemplar. I hope that our course of readings, writings and discussions has led you into a new world of knowledge, issues and concerns, as well as given you useful critiques of your written compositions.

But equally I hope that I’ve demonstrated a kind of curious, far-reaching and inventive inquiry that has set examples for you of how to go about discovering new issues to explore, and new information to consider and assess. I hope you have observed me being enterprising and creative in ways that prompt you to do likewise, having caught something of the same spirit of inquiry and solution seeking that motivates me.

*

FAITH AND HOPE

The faith I have that counters dark despair
Is not in a protector God who keeps
Me from all ill and guards me with His care;
What I believe is What one sows one reaps.

Which is to say, I put my faith in me:
That in my inmost being I can find
The way I need to go that keeps me free
From karmic consequence and clears my mind.

“But are these not the same?” I hear you ask:
“Is not your inner consciousness the mind
Of God directing you behind a mask,
A deeper truth to which just now you’re blind?”

To which I say, “Then that’s a mystery
The truth of which I hope some day I’ll see.”

*

ME FIRST VS. THE GOLDEN RULE

Since the compassionate teaching of the Golden Rule seems to be a universal ethical principle of human community, it is worth asking why it is not universally practiced: “Do not do to others what you would not like done to you”; or, positively, Do to others what you would like done to you”—same coin, two sides.

From the positive side, let me ask: What do I want others to do to me? I readily reply:

• respect me
• be kind to me
• care for me
• encourage me
• help me
• trust me
• expect the best of me
• enjoy me

And when I feel such an amiable attitude expressed toward me, I’m disposed to feel the same way in return; when, however, I receive chilliness and disregard from others, rather than warmth and kindly radiance, then my own generosity and openness constrict and cool.

Knowing this from my own experience, I therefore know my duty, by the Golden Rule: I must be gentle, generous, genuine and kind. To behave that way, freely and spontaneously, feels natural and good.

Why then do I not always behave so? Because I prefer serving myself, my own desires, wants, and needs than serving others, even if they behave kindly toward me, but more easily if they don’t. In such cases, Me First wins, which happens all too often.

*

FAVORITES

Who are the students who impress me best,
Those stars whom I’ll remember when they’re gone?
They’re ones with a distinctive sort of zest
For bookish lore toward which they’re deeply drawn.

They’re keen to read and love the sounds of words
And how words wreathe the sense of sentences,
Yet they’re not simply super-studious nerds:
Asked why they study, they’ll just say, “Because.”

Which means, I think, because they’re curious,
Because they yearn to ponder what’s unknown,
Because their wonder is compendious,
And they enjoy being quiet and alone.

For only then they’re clear to contemplate
The depths of literature and know what’s great.

*