Almost got the first piece for the week ready. I've got a stack of tests to get graded before the morning, though. So here's a very interesting new take on an old song. I still remember the first time I heard an alternate rendition of this song, back in high school at that first retreat we took. The video below is almost as cool...
Every year, our school brings in adults from various careers to talk to our students about future job options. Architects and teachers, nurses and attorneys: we usually get a decent range of possible vocations for our students to consider. In the most recent round of presentations, I sat in on a gentleman sharing with two dozen sophomores about the benefits of serving in the armed forces. I was curious to hear what he had to say; my father was in the Air Force, and my brother has been in the Army for the entirety of his adult life. What would his selling points be, I wondered, for encouraging students to consider the Army during a time of war?
He was a genial man, polite and positive. He briefly mentioned his growing-up. He made a fleeting comment about time spent in other countries. The bulk of his talk, though, centered on one thing: how the military is a great early career choice because it will pay for your college education. He asked the students what they were hoping to be when they grew up. He mentioned the current cost of college. And he mentioned that the military has a great program to pay not only for your college tuition, but also to reward you financially for decent academic performance. He gave a quality, convincing presentation, and paying for a college education is no small thing in our current economic situation. I couldn’t help thinking, though, that something very important had been left unsaid.
When the moment presented itself, just before he handed out free pencils and lanyards, I asked the speaker to elaborate on some of the things he had glossed over: how long had he spent overseas? where had he been? had he seen any combat? Turns out that he had been overseas for a number of months in places as various as Korea and Germany. He had seen combat in at least one major battle in Afghanistan. I wanted to ask more, to know more, so that the students could know more. I was a little shocked, then, when he effortlessly directed his attention back to the students by asking them what video games they enjoyed playing.
In the opening pages of The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis speaks of the importance of teaching our children just and proper sentiment, to feel right things well. He draws a line back to Aristotle, who asserted that “the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.” While this might sound like indoctrination to the free-thinkers of our day, I believe the idea rings true. Consider the speaker’s argument: Education is an important, necessary, and costly thing; the military will pay for your education; so join the military and let them take care of this important thing for you. But is there a “better” reason to serve one’s country? And if so, what is it? “In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism. . . about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use,” Lewis asserts. I would say that replacing “syllogisms” with “an all-expenses paid education” would work just as well.
This, I think, is the essential thing that was missing from the speaker’s presentation: the appeal to something greater than fiscal practicality. The appeal to a paid education is well and good, but I doubt you’re going to top the hill of a distant land, guns ablaze, crying “this is for next semester’s English class!” Ideally, I suppose, you do things like join the military or go to college or become a teacher because you believe in something bigger than yourself. You do it because it is the right thing, not simply because it is obviously profitable. I do not doubt the speaker’s sincerity, but I also do not doubt that he knew who exactly he was talking to. Have we finally raised a generation so far removed from believing in any greater ideal that we can only get their buy-in for important things by pointing out the potential for monetary compensation? Have we in every way become a mercenary society?
Lewis calls those who are ruled by logical expedience alone “men without chests.” His hope, then, is that man will come to be ruled by right thinking and right feeling. I’m not sure how we get there from a place where sentiment is viewed as ironic at best and as fake or manipulative at worst, where the best reason for doing something is utilitarian benefit. Perhaps I still live in a fantasy world, but I cannot help but wonder if the man in uniform speaking to the still-impressionable young citizens fighting wars of their own left unsaid the one thing needing most to be said, even at the risk of it bypassing the heart only to go in one ear and out the other.
I get to see a number of interesting online things by the recommendation of various and sundry people. The following video, "Western Spaghetti" by PES, was recommended by Douglas Coupland, one of my favorite writers. It's an interesting juxtaposition of the familiar and the dissimilar. So sit back and enjoy something a little different. . .
"How do you begin to truly write?” the narrator of Tobias Wolff’s Old School asks. It’s a question, or at least the form of a question, that I have asked myself both recently and often. How does anyone do anything truly, especially when it comes to words, and especially at a time when words are digitized, weightless, and everywhere?
I decided, upon returning from Seattle, to take a break from the blog. Life and words overlap in strange and subtle ways in my life, with one always leading me back to the other. But after posting here for over five years, I was no longer sure of the point, which made me uneasy. How do you write about your life without reducing it to sound-bytes? How do you convey that there is more to life than the media you digest? Why is it so important to write about life in the first place? My trip to Seattle left me with the feeling that I was entering a period of transition, which meant that I needed my mind a little less cluttered than usual. So no blogging. Instead? More reading. Writing at home with pen and paper. Trying to be present with friends. Sifting through impressions to locate my lost self before trying to move forward. As I did this, two concerns became evident. I had to determine, though, if were they legitimate.
First, I noticed a potential imbalance between listening and speaking in my life. Jon Krakauer begins one chapter of Into the Wild citing someone’s fear of being “too long alone,” as if you could forget how to be around others. Is it possible, I wondered, to be “too long a listener,” to go too long without articulating your own story well? I firmly believe that people should be able to tell their stories to others without edit or interruption. But there isn’t much of an economy in the act of listening: asking a question doesn’t demand a question asked in return. Is it possible that I’ve gotten so used to listening to others tell their story that I have forgotten how to tell my own? Had listening made me lazy? Beyond that, I have also seen the listening ear abused, taken hostage by those who speak without filter or request. Witnessing the effects of such moments has pushed me even farther into a place where I do not volunteer my story. Still, “the grace of God is a listening ear,” the song says. I cannot help but wonder if the grace of God for me would be an open-ended question asked over a couple of drinks and answered over a couple of hours. Perhaps then I would work harder at prying open the lid that holds in my own story.
The second of my potential problems with words is rooted in fear. Over time, I’ve made a fine art of personal censorship when it comes to sharing my opinions. Fear often keeps me from writing and saying things that will make my parents think that I am sad. I let fear hold me back from saying or writing things that will make my friends think that I disagree with them. Fear stops me from saying or writing things that might lead my co-workers and students to misunderstand me. So I end up writing and saying an awful lot of nothing. We often hear of our words revealing things we did not intend, that our words can somehow betray us. Is it possible that I have somehow betrayed my words by leaving important things unsaid? “They that know have grown afraid to speak,” the ghost of George MacDonald says in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. I’m not sure what I know at times, but I’m well aware that I have grown afraid to speak for fear of saying a word that wakes a giant that will crush what little life I feel I might have left in me. Little honor, if any, is given for such a self-imposed gag order.
A few years ago, Frederick Buechner wrote a book about faith and literature. I quite like the title, which he lifted from the closing speech in King Lear: “The weight of this sad time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” I suppose the Duke of Albany could say such a thing because every major character in that story was dead. Me? I’d like to think that my story is still being told, that it is still worth telling. I understand that telling it is a risk that I must take, that I can’t afford not to. Being too much of a listener? Being afraid to say what I feel? The weak and pitiful excuses of a coward, both. When the day is done, my words are all that I have. There is no spouse reading a book beside me, no child playing in the other room, not even a roommate playing obnoxious music a little too loud. I have my words, and I want to speak truthfully and well with them. If I do nothing with words, if I do not write them down and move them around and somehow set them free, I waste them. And in wasting them, in letting them fester, they stand in silent judgment over me, like little rocks on the verge of crying out. And that, I must say, I have no excuse to allow.
“Anyway, I never talk about myself, and you guys never ask, and I’ve always respected that. But there comes a time when you either speak or forfeit what comes next.” -Douglas Coupland, Microserfs
