"But apart from that, in speaking of my inclinations as no longer liable to change, and of what was destined to make my life happy, he aroused in me two very painful suspicions. The first was that (at a time when, every day, I regarded myself as standing upon the threshold of a life which was still intact and would not enter upon its course until the following morning) my existence had already begun, and that, furthermore, what was yet to follow would not differ to any extent from what had gone before."
Marcel Proust, With in Budding Grove, p. 520
In this passage Proust is further reflecting upon his father's words in regard to his career (and I'll attempt to discuss his second painful suspicion tomorrow) but doubtless more importantly the flow of his life. When does one's life begin, and do you actually ever know that you're on a threshold? I tell my students all the time, mainly when I'm discussing their self-portrait project in their first year course Concepts of the Self, that they are in the midst of the biggest transformation of their entire life; that never again will they change so dramatically in such a short amount of time. Certainly most of the time this is true. Most of them are profoundly different people when they graduate at twenty-two, after four years of learning and self-reflection, than they were when they walked in the door at age eighteen. For that matter, some of them are remarkably different people after one semester in college. At the same time, some of them don't change one iota in four years, and the transformation, if it occurs at all, ends up happening much later in life. In my more pessimistic moments I fear that we are making it more and more impossible for the students to embark on that transformative journey as we, as parents and as a society, seemingly do our best to infantalize them. Yes, I know I've ranted about this before; my pet theory that just as humans turned wolves into family friendly pet dogs by transforming them into eternal puppies, we're doing the same thing with our own children. We are witnessing an avalanche of helicopter parents and umbellically-challenged kids and the explosion of accommodation forms (most valid, but an increasing number fatuous) and trigger words. Our children are being forced to remain children. By attempting to remove the potential for anything uncomfortable ever happening we dramatically limit the potential for meaningful change, and for that necessary evolution into true adults. In regard to a college education we are dramatically limiting the ability of teachers to teach, not only because we have to be so careful not to make even one student uncomfortable for one day, but also because as a society we're cramming our students into such a small safe little space that they can't begin to change because they've never been asked or allowed to do anything. As Emma Goldman reminds us, "The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought."And this reflects back on human nature. Once again drawing from Goldman, "And how can any one speak of it [human nature] today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded and maimed?" What's sad is how little spirit so many of our students have. They tell their parents everything, but not in a good way. They give their parents access to their grades online and happily allow their parents to call their professors. Not to sound like a grumpy old man (or more like a grumpy old man than usual) but at that age I would have pulled a Radio Days inspired Mr. Zipsky and run amuck with a meat cleaver if my parents had called my professors when I was in college. And it's not just that we as a society are smothering them or that their parents are over-planning their lives; more importantly, and sadly, it is draining their spirit and trapping them in a very tightly-constrained intellectual world and thus severely limiting their ability to make that profound leap in college when they're on that threshold. I'm thinking back to many of the great points that my friend and colleague Erik Shonstrom made in his recent George "Honey Boy" Evans Symposium talk - and also in his book Wild Curiosity (highly recommended).
Wow, that was quite a rant for a Sunday morning. And, like all my rants, it's always triggered by my love for my students (which is why they unfailingly forgive my often churlish behavior). It's like we as a society are parroting the actions of Siddharta Gautama's father who, in an attempt to forego destiny and keep his son from reaching enlightenment, surrounded him with a world of pleasure wherein he would never have an uncomfortable moment that might inspire the existential moment that in the end inspires all profound change. Fortunately, the transcendent reality had its own plan and appeared to Siddharta Gautama in the Four Signs and he was launched on his spiritual quest. In much the same way life will, normally, prevail and our students will embark on their own journeys, although later than they should.
After that long screed I suppose I should get back to the original question (if there was one). Is it possible to know when you're on that threshold? I guess it would be nice if we did. As Dickens tells us at the beginning of David Copperfield, "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anyone else, these pages must show." There are traditional times that serve as threshold moments, although as should be clear from the rambling exegesis above, that is hardly clear cut. One of those traditional times is when you leave for college. But can that be too self-evident and thus self-constricting? It's like praying as compared to thinking about the fact that you're praying. Who is noticing that I'm praying? Who is noticing that I'm in college and reading some of the great works and embarking upon a journey of self-discovery? Like most of life, I guess, these changes are probably more evolutionary than revolutionary, more the product of adding grains of sand as compared to one soul-shattering moment. When I think back to some of the great books I read in college and some of the great thoughts I discussed in college, I don't think they fully came to fruition until years later when I read them again or reconsidered them with a more mature mind.
So, what was my true threshold point (if there was only one)? In many ways it wasn't until I first went overseas at age forty-two, and it's not as if I had not spent years (hell, by then, decades) reading and thinking and reflecting before that moment. Was it going overseas or was it a case of embarking on something utterly different (Proust talks a lot about Habit, so we'll come back to this again)? It can't just be going overseas because many people jet overseas and don't change at all - or at least don't change much. Some of the students we dragged to Zanzibar were profoundly changed while others skated through the week and a half with seemingly no transformation at all (again, it is probably evolutionary and it may hit them a decade down the road). In the end it may just be the process of freeing your mind from the tyranny of Habit (more on this later).
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