over the past year, as I have struggled against and eventually yielded to the idea of not stubbornly pursuing my PhD at all costs (at least not right now) and have contemplated other career options, I’ve had to spend a lot of time thinking about what I really want out of life. what I really want to do with my time, what I could be happy doing, what really matters to me. and along with the obvious answers involving Emily and family — and my willingness to put these concerns first in making decisions about our future — I keep returning to this idea of “having a clue.”
essentially, what I mean by this is my desire to spend my life learning. but not necessarily the kind of erudite learning I would have to show in a given academic field were I to end up teaching in it. in fact, most likely not — the more time I spend out of school and obsessing about one specific topic or another, the more I’m glad to be away from that and concerned more with bigger pictures. but my love for school and my desire up until now to really get a grasp on all of the topics I’ve researched in grad school is obviously related to this idea of wanting to have a clue.
I feel compelled to understand things, though not in an obsessive “tick” sort of way — I don’t feel panicked when I peruse through a used book store, but rather challenged and excited. I wish I had the time and means to spend my time learning. but I’m also capable (and willing) to leave topics behind once I feel I’m getting more familiar with the terrain. I don’t feel the need to master any one topic any more; I’d rather spend my time extending my reach so that I’m at least familiar with more topics, and perhaps mildly conversant, should I run into someone who knows much more about a subject.
I guess this is why I love learning languages and am always eager to move on to the next. sure, I’m frustrated by not having absolute mastery (elusive, anyway) of a language, but I would rather be basically conversant and — more important — able to read and understand ten languages than seemingly fluent in only one or two. would it benefit me to reach fluency in, say, French and to have read all of French literature? sure. but is the time needed to achieve this over the years worth the time lost to learning German and Spanish? I may not use any of these languages on a regular basis (speaking, at least), but I’d consider my life enriched by being able to understand these languages — and many more — and to be able to read certain things in the original.
I know that when I die, it won’t really “matter” than I read Plato or Augustine or Heinrich Boll or Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Andre Malraux in the original, or that I was able to read certain books on, say, evolutionary anthropology. but while I’m alive, it’s what I want to do. if there is leisure to be enjoyed, I can’t really imagine spending my time any other way — not sacrificing, of course, time with Emily or with my family, present and future. that will always occupy the first spot.
as hackneyed as the image is, I sort of think in terms of valley and mountain imagery. most people are born — and live and die — in the crowded muck of the valley, content to know what everybody else just “knows” — that is, inherited, superficial, often false knowledge — and capable of only seeing their immediate surroundings, pretending that it’s all there is, or at least that it’s better than the rest. maybe you can add to this the image of people shuffling along, trampling one another to move down a road they pretend is gonna lead them somewhere else — to another world, the next life, etc. but me, I want to climb out and up, with the hope of sitting down quietly somewhere with a view. I know that this is it, this is all we have, and I want to take a better (i.e. bigger) look at what I can see from that viewpoint — the beautiful and the miserable.
anyway, it’s certainly a cliche, and it’s not even a well-thought-out one. but there you have it. after living to love my wife and my family, and in addition to wanting to do some good in and to be less of a burden on this planet, I want to spend my life trying to get a clue about what it has been and what it is all about.
Tags: cliche, Emily, grad school, having a clue, Ph.D.
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