I have been asking myself questions about life and human behavior since I was small. This never appeared to be a choice, but rather, a part of my nature.
If my parents hadn’t lived through the economic depression in the 1930s and World War II, if they pursued wealth and fame, or if the world was not in shock from the Holocaust, I suppose I might have turned into someone a bit different. In any case, I have been told I lead an interesting life.
Another way to say it would be interesting and interested. A pastor I treated told me, “You listen with quiet intensity.”
I try.
I hope to recognize others as they are, in their most naked and truest selves.
Here are some thoughts that have passed my way close enough to reach out and catch them. They pertain to both my career as a clinical psychologist and as a student of the world and of universities.
Upon retirement, I began a four-year, face-to-face sequence of reading and discussion of seminal works in the Western tradition. My class numbered about 14 individuals from various backgrounds, all more than a few steps past 40.
The Basic Program of the University of Chicago is an introduction to philosophy, poetry, history, magnificent fiction, and more. Authors included James Baldwin, Jane Austen, Dante, Descartes, de Tocqueville, Virginia Woolf, Homer, Plato, and Shakespeare, among others.
We did not receive lectures. The instructors used the Socratic method of interaction with the members of our group.
There were no tests to take, no papers to write, and no grades, but the expectation was to take an earnest and dedicated attitude to our shared endeavor.
We did.
One of my favorite professors once compared us to the students he taught at a local college, saying, “You actually read the texts!”
He wasn’t talking about text messages on our phones.
The pupils recognized the necessity of reading with care and close attention—a thoughtful approach. The institution discouraged us from studying biographical information about the authors, summaries, or other secondary sources as aids to comprehending the assigned material.
Engagement with the author’s words required our effort to determine their meaning and intention, rather than immediate agreement or disagreement with their ideas.
This scheme altered how we thought, a process that began with responding to an instructor’s probing questions, and changed us into people who focused anew on how we pondered others’ ideas and questioned our own.
One might say that we purchased more self-awareness along with knowledge in our time at U. of C. Finding yourself lost and then found can be a pleasant shock, even among older people upon returning to school.
At one point, a faculty member noted that in a single Socratic dialogue with him, I reconfigured my thinking about what I had counted as true only a few minutes earlier. In effect, I argued with myself, creating internal questioning that Plato’s generation might have enjoyed.
A couple who signed up for the first quarter realized they wanted a passive role and an instructor who lectured. Before long, they departed.
For all the rest, the experience was fun, lively, and filled with goodwill. No less important, we were respectful of the towering genius of authors who were kind enough to reach through centuries into our classroom and our minds.
Some of the educators displayed kindness; others acted more like prosecuting attorneys, cross-examining us. Nonetheless, they all wanted to strip away the darkness and routine of daily news and life—the better to fill our heads with light.
Socrates’s approach aimed, to a degree, at something successful therapists do.
Clinicians do not make a practice of telling their clients what to feel, what to think, or how to behave. Rather, they ask questions and try to take them step by step until they discover something important about themselves.
The veil that has been clouding their vision is thereby taken into their own hands and removed. Because the patient arrives at his new awareness without being micromanaged, he is much more likely to own and act on it.
Over four years back in school, I realized there was still more to master. I learned to read differently, in a more satisfying and questioning way, because of the Basic Program, the best of its faculty, and the collaboration, camaraderie, and friendship of fellow students.
I came to understand that I could only know myself by running the gauntlet of the challenges I chose to take on in life and those I was fated to endure, all while walking the tender, swaying tightrope of unpredictability.
As for the tests of living I do not encounter, I will never be able to say anything about them, beyond hoping I would behave admirably if the occasion arose.
Fingers crossed.
No life lasts long enough to tell us who we are in the tests we missed.
What else do I believe?
If we want to understand the world, we should escape the routine of hearing an idea and responding with “that makes sense,” an expression that permits us to turn off our brains.
One might respond, “If it makes sense, why do you think you never realized this before? What other alternative explanations might be possible? Do they fit better than the one just mentioned?”
Reading well means digging deep and taking enough time to reflect on how it relates to our planet, the life around us, and our responsibility to repair the world—tikkun olam, as the Hebrew phrase reminds us.
The lives embodied in the best of books reveal who we are, how we think, the ideas we hold, and the mistakes we make.
The finest of them are not so much about the characters portrayed in them, their behavior, virtues and vices, and the ideas they hold and live by.
They are about us.
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The top image is this is a gif for Tuca by Tuca1861. The second gif is an animated sequence for the Inspire: New Readers campaign by Eugene Dobrik, Zachary McCune, Mule Design.
Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
