Naturally (and by that I mean ironically), the gravity that has pulled me back to this blog has inspired me to start with not my own thoughts, but those of a much wiser man I know. There's a professor at Dartmouth, Paul Christesen (Classics), who leads a weekly discussion group (called Discussion Group, of all things, or DG), of students to talk about, in a nutshell, our personal philosophies about life. He was inspired to start the group when, a few years back, he asked a graduating student what she was going to do (for a job). She said she was going to work in finance. He asked her why, and wouldn't you know it, she didn't have an answer. Even something like "It pays really well, and money is important because of x, y, or z," would have been better than having no answer at all. It struck Prof Christesen (probably not for the first time, as he is a Dartmouth alum himself), that there is a reprehensible lack of reflection at Dartmouth, and as a prof, he could do something to affect the situation. Voila DG.
Usually the format for DG goes something like this: During the week, Prof Christesen (PCC) will blitz out an article or chapter of a book with some questions for us to consider. Then on Sunday, we get together and discuss. Also, throughout the year, DG members (there are about 8 of us) do something called a discourse, in which we'll talk about some questions we have about ourselves for about 20 minutes, and then answer questions from other people in the group. The whole thing takes about an hour and is absolutely exhausting, but also extraordinarily helpful. This winter though, part by chance and part by design, everyone in the group was a senior. So we did senior discourses, and at the end (because he's going to be in Greece in the spring), PCC gave his own discourse, which was more like a benediction. His advice - well, some if it - is what I want to share with you now. It consisted of about 5 cautionary tales and 5 reasons to be optimistic - I'll share bits of both.
I should note quickly that I give what PCC says an enormous amount of credibility because besides being extraordinarily contemplative himself, he's exceptionally popular among his former students, and they visit him frequently. Through them he's developed what I consider to be some remarkably valid theories about life. Here are a few.
Money, PCC tells us, is valuable for one very important reason. Anybody who says it's not is either crazy or deluding himself. But the only reason that it's important is to buy us the freedom to live the lives we'd like to live. Perhaps this seems obvious. I want to travel, so I need money. I want my kids to not worry about paying for college, so I need money. But somewhere along the way, money ceases to be a means to an end, and instead becomes an end in itself, and we give up the freedom we were seeking in order to make money. Again, this seems obvious on the surface, but an extraordinarily high number of people seem to fall into this trap. And thus its simplicity is what makes this advice so poignant - if we remember that money is important only to give us our freedom, then we should never find ourselves slaves to our money.
The next bit was, I thought, the most provocative. PCC told us that a former student of his - one who is very successful in his profession - once told him that, "I wish I had known 5 years ago when I started this job that I'd become the kind of person that is successful at it." Dartmouth students (and anyone reading this blog, I'm sure) are really good at figuring out how to be successful in whatever environment they're in, PCC told us. In other words, as if by instinct, we do whatever is necessary to advance in our professions, even if it means becoming someone we did not want to be. Naturally, this happens without actually realizing it, or else it would not happen. So when you're thinking of taking a job, consider the people who have advanced in that job. Do you like them? Do you want to be like they are? Because if you stay in that job, you will become one of them. That's kind of scary.
But now for some good news!
"Your best years are ahead of you." Wow! Not a lot to say about this one I guess. It's hard to offer proof. But if you trust PCC like I do, it's nice to hear.
A unified theory of everything:
PCC does a lot of thinking. He's a classicist, and so he's got sort of a weird reductionist way of going about it that I don't really understand. But he said he realized while going for a walk one night that all of the advice he gives is, at heart, about being with people you like. In short, if you like the people in your life, you will be happy. If you don't, you won't. It seems to simple to be true. But then, I think we tend to overcomplicate things.
Your thoughts?
1 comments:
"We are here to fart around, don't let anyone tell you any different."
-The late Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Yes, we do overcomplicate things.
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