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11/18/2011

4 Comments

 
First, since this is not a pensee over which the threat of professorly displeasure looms, can I apologize for completely dropping the ball in posting thus far?  I really have no excuse - except for that strange, frenetic voice in my head that stammers and rapidly and repeatedly insists on doing anything and everything tomorrow, preferably when no one is looking.  At any rate, I'm very sorry and I truly will try to make up for it - every other week for the foreseeable future...

As someone very much in limbo right now, I've been thinking a lot about the where and the why - oh, and quite frantically about the how.  We're all PLSers; we seem to have an almost pathological (pardon the negative connotation!) need to do and be... better and more - to make something real and amazing and dumbfoundingly splendid with our lives.  Goodness knows I want that, and I think anyone who forges ahead through three years of Kants and Euclids and Hegels (no offense meant - just imagine I picked people you hated too...) for the sake of not only the luminous Dantes and Dostoevskys but also for the possibility of understanding everything a little better - well, I think you must want IT too. 

Now maybe my weird disillusionment with academia wouldn't have wormed its way in if I had been a faithful reader and poster over the past few months.  I still love PLS and I still itch to continue exploring the Great Books and the great ideas  - and the possibilty of IT - but more and more I keep coming back to the little things... and I think maybe those "sticky little leaves" don't have anything to do with philosophic knowledge after all (I always tried to make them coincide - maybe I was the only one).  ...And then I wonder what the real difference is between the two roads in the yellow wood:  maybe just the quiet ability to love the small things as much as the large - and to pay as much attention to the shadow the leaves make on the path or the way the phone sounds when it rings in your pocket as whether or not the space around you is a mental construct or what time really means.  Maybe it's enough to just get the hang of living life as a gift from Him - and trying to communicate that in whatever language you know best and whatever life you love with your best and most peaceful self.  

I don't know.  This is most likely something you all already knew - and here I am with my leftover epiphanies again...  Or maybe I'm just giving academic endeavor the "rottenest kind of a deal."  That may well be.  But they're my honest thoughts for better or worse.

-L Schaffer
4 Comments
Joey
11/21/2011 09:11:07 am

Laura, great post. Don't worry about not posting often - you post whenever you feel like it. But of course, we all love hearing from you.

I have been thinking about much the same things as you, or if not the same, having thoughts at least from the same family. I wonder - is there some inevitable period of limbo, some fiery brook that each college graduate, or at least each PLS major, must pass through after graduation before moving on to a somewhat more peaceful and secure mode of life? This may be peculiar to humanities majors, and especially PLS majors, because in our idealistic (quixotic?) quests for the beautiful, good, and true we have deferred making any real decisions or acquiring any practical knowledge for longer than anyone else. I have never regretted doing PLS, but I I have had many moments recently in which I have cursed myself for not also having any realistic and well-defined career goals that I could have worked toward (through internships, networking, research, etc.) in tandem with my PLS education.

I think I agree with you about the "sticky little leaves" thing...I have to keep constantly reminding my ambitions that the things they are always telling me are important are not really the things that matter in the long run; they are not the things that I will care about when I look back on my life at the end. It's a struggle, for me. At the same time, though, I don't want to completely annihilate my ambitions. I can't make myself that much of a Buddhist. And I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I think you can still pursue a career in academia, or whatever else you have dreamed up, while still remembering that those are not the things that are most important. It's all about maintaining the right order of priorities in your mind. So, in a way, I think you can walk those two roads at once, in two places at the same time like a quantum particle unobserved.

Or maybe I'm just lying to myself...what do you all think?

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Lillian
11/26/2011 03:14:55 pm

My dear lovely Laura, I wish we could sit and have a good long talk about this -- I see echoed here many of my own questions and worries over the past months.

I wrote an end-of-year pensee for Munzel's class that I recently re-discovered, and it speaks to your question here. I am going to send it to you in a separate email; it's too long to subject everyone to. If anyone else would like a copy, let me know.

To Joey and Laura both: I am still hashing this out, but some of the answers lie in Newman, and in our faith. We all need "tent-making," you see, in St. Paul's sense. Academic endeavour is a beautiful form of tent-making and of using our God-given talents, but it is not open to or possible for everyone. Hence the gift of faith that IS accessible to everyone, every where.

But just as holiness could be achieved through carpentry, fishing, or tent-making, for many of us it may lie in academic inquiry - where our talents and passions lie... I hope this makes sense, a bit.

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Laura
11/28/2011 12:41:31 am

Joey and Lillian, thank you - so much - for replying to my post. I only just found your answers five minutes ago, but I already feel a little less out-in-the-void. And I'm really glad to know that I'm not a failed PLSer for all my concerns... Maybe walking both paths at once is yet another instance of "both and" and follows more from the mystical aims of man than anything else - with faith as the only thing making this paradoxical unity possible. I can't tell you how comforting that thought is.

And Lilly, I'm sorry for the craziness of my email reply - I'm really ok, and your pensee helped more than you know.

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Conor
11/28/2011 10:59:01 am

Laura,

Great post. I always love reading your work, poetry or prose.

It's tough because I don't think I fall into the same boat as you, Joey and Lily. I haven't had any time to really freak out about that type of thing because all my energy has been devoted to teaching (and freaking out about teaching).

Anyhoo, I think the real value of a PLS education lies in the fact that it made you a better you than you ever thought you could be. That's a lot of you's. Maybe it would sound better as "PLS made Laura Schaffer a better Laura Schaffer than Laura Schaffer ever thought she could be." Ehh, still wordy, but you get the gist. Just hang in there and good luck walking those two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

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