Essays
Shaping a Life that Matters (2003) Kathleen Norris
College is a luxury, and not in the way you might think. The expense of a college education does require sacrifice on the part of ourselves and our families. I was supported by loans, scholarships, and on-campus jobs that included working in the cafeteria and shelving library books. But the true luxury that college provides, in our frantically busy world, is time. What time, you may ask, if you're juggling deadlines, meetings, preparation for exams, and a social life? That's the day-to-day reality of student life. But if we step back so that a larger picture emerges, we can see that college is a time like no other in our lives.
When I look at a college catalog, I linger over the course offerings like a kid in a candy store, tempted by everything I see. It would be wonderful, I say to myself, to have the time for all this. Time for reading and thinking, study and discussion. College is a luxury because it is a time and place set apart for activities that are hard to come by in the workaday world, for learning and questioning, for exploring avocations and vocations. To use a monastic term, college is a time of formation, a period when we shape the rest of our lives.
In our utilitarian culture, we're tempted to regard college merely as the training ground for a career. Many parents begin building a college fund when their children are infants in the hope that a good education will help their kids find better jobs and a higher income. But we shortchange the college experience, and ourselves, if we settle for such a shallow understanding of what an education provides. At its best, college is not merely preparation for a job, but for life itself. It is a time for discovering not only what we want to do in life, but who we want to be.
A liberal arts education is uniquely suited to help us in this endeavor. And as unlikely as it seems, if we use our time in college to read everything we can get our hands on, to plunge into the literature of the sciences and history, to develop an appreciation of the strange and beautiful languages of poetry and mathematics, we will find that the world, and our life in it, never ceases to be interesting. We develop values and insights that help us to resist the crass temptations of a culture that values only consumption and celebrity. We might avoid the addictions that are the scourge of our times. Why numb ourselves with drugs or alcohol, the lottery, or the shopping mall when the world is so fascinating? Why does everything in the universe spin? Why, in a classroom, does the "pluralistic ignorance effect" take hold so that all the people with questions think, "Well, it's just me," and no one dares to raise a hand? Why are there more life forms at the edges of any ecosystem than in the middle? How does a brisk walk stimulate both mind and body? According to Psalm 139, the answer is that we, and the world, are "wondrously made."
And literature, that stuff you read in school, is one response to that wonder. It tells our story, and it always has. Both our holy writ, and our secular literature endure for centuries not because someone tells us it is great, but because, when we need it, it's there: when we stir hope out of the ashes; when we are reminded that it is not evil that has the last word, but good. When I first read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was struck by its revelation that evil may have a terrible strength, but it is not invincible. The Harry Potter books carry on in the same vein, recognizing both the power of evil, and its essential weakness in the presence of the good.
Literature can be our companion in the best and worst moments of our lives. When the images of September 11, 2001, came across my television screen, the prophet Jeremiah spoke to me over a distance of 3,000 years: "A voice is heard in Ramah; weeping and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, because they are no more." And, "How lonely sits the city that was once full of people. How like a widow she has become, she that was great among nations." I turned off the TV and turned to Psalm 79, which is a national lament over the destruction of ancient Israel's temple: "They have poured out blood like water in Jerusalem; no one is left to bury the dead." In those timeless words of grief I found some consolation.
My education proved its worth on September 11, and in the days that followed, providing me with resources I was grateful to have. Interviews with rescue workers and survivors brought these lines of William Blake's to mind: "For Mercy has a human heart/ Pity, a human face." Blake was a mad old poet who saw angels in trees. But his words are not only sane, but true. Mercy does have a human heart, and pity, a human face. Lines from other writers began to haunt me. I was taken by a simple phrase from Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness: "the horror, the horror." I had been reminded of this by Apocalypse Redux, a film about the madness and horror of the Vietnam War. As I observed the solemn yet uplifting prayer service from the National Cathedral, Emily Dickinson's words reflected how I felt: "After great pain, a formal feeling comes – the Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs."
The sight of ferries carting both the dead and living out of Manhattan inspired me to turn to one of Dickinson's contemporaries, Walt Whitman. His "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" seemed prophetic, as if his spirit were watching over the events in New York:
One man, rejoicing in being alive, and somehow sharing that joy with other people yet to come. Walt Whitman helped me to grieve and to heal.
"What is the city but the people?" is a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but my husband tells me it is much more ancient, a Roman proverb that was likely first penned by Cicero over 2,000 years ago. Looking at New York City, a place that many Americans formerly maligned, I could ask myself, with a renewed sense of awe: "What is the city but the people?" Buildings may fall, even great landmarks, but the people are what matter. And the people came through, magnificently.
The point of all of this is to suggest that literature does not merely reside in textbooks; it is not presented to you so that you can accumulate knowledge, or answer questions on a quiz. Writers, I assure you, don't bother with the struggle of writing in order to torment or bore you, or get you an A. Literature exists to help you gain wisdom, and live your life to the fullest. Even a memoir, which is supposed to be the story of one person, is really there to help you understand your own story. The eighteenth-century wit Samuel Johnson said, "The purpose of literature is to help the reader better to enjoy life, and to endure it." Your teachers know this, and if they – and you – are lucky, you will come away from college knowing that literature lives not on the page, but in the human heart.
What is your story? What is your calling? In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul reminds us that we are all to "lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you." That's a tall order. Has God really bestowed on us gifts that we are called to share with others? Some people are blessed with nurturing families who encourage them to develop their talents, while others are made to feel worthless and have to fight for their lives. But each of us must tackle the question: How do we become the people God intends us to be? How do we discover our vocations?
I always know when I find people who are living their true vocation. They are gracious and hospitable in gratuitous, God-like ways I have no right to expect. And plenty of them have no college degree. But they've taken ordinary jobs – like driving a taxi, or styling hair, or parenting, and made them something special, a form of ministry. They seem to have found the answer to the question: What in the world do I do with my life?
As for myself, I entered college with the vague notion that a liberal arts education would help me discover my vocation, but by the time I was a college senior, I was still in the dark. I thought about taking a year off from school to live with my parents and work for a temp agency. Maybe then I'd apply to library school. Instead, despite my fears, I moved to New York City and worked at a small literary organization. It was a perfect post-college job, one that encouraged me to keep on writing. I settled in, comfortably, for nearly six years. But one day, my boss, a wise mentor named Betty Kray, upset my little apple cart. I apologized for a mistake I'd made and said I hoped she wasn't disappointed in me. She thought a moment, and said, "No. I would be disappointed in you if you were still in this job ten years from now."
I was shocked. Maybe I had grown complacent in a job I needed to outgrow. But what came next? I had not a clue, but once I dared to ask the question, I could see the little cracks appearing in my stable life, and was no longer afraid to consider that small changes might lead to larger ones. Not long after I met the man who was to be my husband, my grandparents in South Dakota died. My mother didn't want to sell their house, the home where she'd grown up. A crazy thought struck me: why couldn't we move there, for a while, until my mother decided what to do? It would be quiet, a good place to write, away from the literary hothouse of New York. This was even crazier than my decision to move to New York. But it seemed right, nonetheless.
And it was. I never could have predicted that my first job would be the last 9-to-5 job I would ever hold, or that for the next thirty years I would survive as a free-lance writer, putting together a crazy-quilt of jobs in order to pay the bills. I didn't even do the practical thing and marry a man with a law degree or MBA. I married another writer, a poet and translator, a refugee from the advertising business. My husband and I are still together, but nearly everything else in our life has changed.
What I have come to think of as "the ten year question" is a good one to keep asking. Who do I want to be in ten years? What do I want my life to look like? It's a question only you can answer. Not your peers, or your teachers, or your parents, although their mentoring can help. Ultimately the decision is yours, and the goal is to live life fully and gratefully, without the burden of regret and fear. You will need to make stable commitments, to marriage, to a family, to a place or vocation. But you will also need to stay restless. If you think you have figured it all out, it's a sure sign that you're stagnating.
After college you may settle into the career you've always dreamed of and learn that it leaves you feeling empty inside. Maybe you'll be so driven to succeed that you will forget to have a life outside of work. Or maybe you'll find that having children alters your idea of what gives life meaning. You may be forced to make a drastic change of plan: many people not much older than you, who entered the job market during the dot.com boom, had to rethink their priorities and reshape their lives when the boom went bust.
Unwelcome events may seize you, health problems, the death of a parent or spouse, a divorce, the loss of a job. Any one of these can be an earthquake, leaving us unsure of the very ground we stand on. Even if we have been fortunate in finding our true calling, in mid-life, we may find that we hit a dry spell, when what sustained us for years no longer works. Conversely, if we have spent our lives in an unfulfilling job, we might seek out new territory. A corporate attorney may turn to teaching or volunteer for the Peace Corps. An insurance executive might become a health care advocate, or teach computer skills to immigrants.
One hard truth of life is that after we've developed our God-given gifts and talents, we are asked in old age to start giving them up. I spend much of my time in the community where my mother lives, where most of the people are over seventy. I've seen a man there confined to his bed who had been a champion swimmer in his youth. I have seen my father, a professional musician, give up the cello he had played for 62 years. I've seen fiercely independent people, like my father, learn to accept help from others. Or not accept it, and lash out, using anger and bitterness to keep them going.
Old age may seem a long way off, and the world will be drastically different when you reach it. Today's technology will seem primitive, and some of you may be living on a space station. But each of us will face the ancient question of whether or not our life has meaning. Why live, if it's only to die? Why bother to become a champion swimmer, or a cellist, if you have to give it up in the end? Why open doors if they only close behind you?
All that you learn in college will help guide you to the answer. And a religious perspective that sees life as a gift from God will help as well. We are meant to shape not only meaningful lives, but holy ones. Indeed, we were created to be friends of God, and prophets. And we can begin this enormous task each day by simply asking for the strength to lead the life to which God has called us.
Ultimately, it is others who will let us know how we are doing, and how we have done. Think of the people in your own life who have blessed you, who have encouraged you, the people for whom you thank God daily. Now ask God to help you become that kind of person yourself, for this should be your education's true aim.
|
« Previous Article | Next Article » |
Shaping a Life that Matters (2003) Kathleen Norris
College is a luxury, and not in the way you might think. The expense of a college education does require sacrifice on the part of ourselves and our families. I was supported by loans, scholarships, and on-campus jobs that included working in the cafeteria and shelving library books. But the true luxury that college provides, in our frantically busy world, is time. What time, you may ask, if you're juggling deadlines, meetings, preparation for exams, and a social life? That's the day-to-day reality of student life. But if we step back so that a larger picture emerges, we can see that college is a time like no other in our lives.
When I look at a college catalog, I linger over the course offerings like a kid in a candy store, tempted by everything I see. It would be wonderful, I say to myself, to have the time for all this. Time for reading and thinking, study and discussion. College is a luxury because it is a time and place set apart for activities that are hard to come by in the workaday world, for learning and questioning, for exploring avocations and vocations. To use a monastic term, college is a time of formation, a period when we shape the rest of our lives.
In our utilitarian culture, we're tempted to regard college merely as the training ground for a career. Many parents begin building a college fund when their children are infants in the hope that a good education will help their kids find better jobs and a higher income. But we shortchange the college experience, and ourselves, if we settle for such a shallow understanding of what an education provides. At its best, college is not merely preparation for a job, but for life itself. It is a time for discovering not only what we want to do in life, but who we want to be.
A liberal arts education is uniquely suited to help us in this endeavor. And as unlikely as it seems, if we use our time in college to read everything we can get our hands on, to plunge into the literature of the sciences and history, to develop an appreciation of the strange and beautiful languages of poetry and mathematics, we will find that the world, and our life in it, never ceases to be interesting. We develop values and insights that help us to resist the crass temptations of a culture that values only consumption and celebrity. We might avoid the addictions that are the scourge of our times. Why numb ourselves with drugs or alcohol, the lottery, or the shopping mall when the world is so fascinating? Why does everything in the universe spin? Why, in a classroom, does the "pluralistic ignorance effect" take hold so that all the people with questions think, "Well, it's just me," and no one dares to raise a hand? Why are there more life forms at the edges of any ecosystem than in the middle? How does a brisk walk stimulate both mind and body? According to Psalm 139, the answer is that we, and the world, are "wondrously made."
And literature, that stuff you read in school, is one response to that wonder. It tells our story, and it always has. Both our holy writ, and our secular literature endure for centuries not because someone tells us it is great, but because, when we need it, it's there: when we stir hope out of the ashes; when we are reminded that it is not evil that has the last word, but good. When I first read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was struck by its revelation that evil may have a terrible strength, but it is not invincible. The Harry Potter books carry on in the same vein, recognizing both the power of evil, and its essential weakness in the presence of the good.
Literature can be our companion in the best and worst moments of our lives. When the images of September 11, 2001, came across my television screen, the prophet Jeremiah spoke to me over a distance of 3,000 years: "A voice is heard in Ramah; weeping and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, because they are no more." And, "How lonely sits the city that was once full of people. How like a widow she has become, she that was great among nations." I turned off the TV and turned to Psalm 79, which is a national lament over the destruction of ancient Israel's temple: "They have poured out blood like water in Jerusalem; no one is left to bury the dead." In those timeless words of grief I found some consolation.
My education proved its worth on September 11, and in the days that followed, providing me with resources I was grateful to have. Interviews with rescue workers and survivors brought these lines of William Blake's to mind: "For Mercy has a human heart/ Pity, a human face." Blake was a mad old poet who saw angels in trees. But his words are not only sane, but true. Mercy does have a human heart, and pity, a human face. Lines from other writers began to haunt me. I was taken by a simple phrase from Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness: "the horror, the horror." I had been reminded of this by Apocalypse Redux, a film about the madness and horror of the Vietnam War. As I observed the solemn yet uplifting prayer service from the National Cathedral, Emily Dickinson's words reflected how I felt: "After great pain, a formal feeling comes – the Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs."
The sight of ferries carting both the dead and living out of Manhattan inspired me to turn to one of Dickinson's contemporaries, Walt Whitman. His "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" seemed prophetic, as if his spirit were watching over the events in New York:
It avails not, time nor place - distance avails not;
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself, also I return, I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd;
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried....
One man, rejoicing in being alive, and somehow sharing that joy with other people yet to come. Walt Whitman helped me to grieve and to heal.
"What is the city but the people?" is a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but my husband tells me it is much more ancient, a Roman proverb that was likely first penned by Cicero over 2,000 years ago. Looking at New York City, a place that many Americans formerly maligned, I could ask myself, with a renewed sense of awe: "What is the city but the people?" Buildings may fall, even great landmarks, but the people are what matter. And the people came through, magnificently.
The point of all of this is to suggest that literature does not merely reside in textbooks; it is not presented to you so that you can accumulate knowledge, or answer questions on a quiz. Writers, I assure you, don't bother with the struggle of writing in order to torment or bore you, or get you an A. Literature exists to help you gain wisdom, and live your life to the fullest. Even a memoir, which is supposed to be the story of one person, is really there to help you understand your own story. The eighteenth-century wit Samuel Johnson said, "The purpose of literature is to help the reader better to enjoy life, and to endure it." Your teachers know this, and if they – and you – are lucky, you will come away from college knowing that literature lives not on the page, but in the human heart.
What is your story? What is your calling? In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul reminds us that we are all to "lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you." That's a tall order. Has God really bestowed on us gifts that we are called to share with others? Some people are blessed with nurturing families who encourage them to develop their talents, while others are made to feel worthless and have to fight for their lives. But each of us must tackle the question: How do we become the people God intends us to be? How do we discover our vocations?
I always know when I find people who are living their true vocation. They are gracious and hospitable in gratuitous, God-like ways I have no right to expect. And plenty of them have no college degree. But they've taken ordinary jobs – like driving a taxi, or styling hair, or parenting, and made them something special, a form of ministry. They seem to have found the answer to the question: What in the world do I do with my life?
As for myself, I entered college with the vague notion that a liberal arts education would help me discover my vocation, but by the time I was a college senior, I was still in the dark. I thought about taking a year off from school to live with my parents and work for a temp agency. Maybe then I'd apply to library school. Instead, despite my fears, I moved to New York City and worked at a small literary organization. It was a perfect post-college job, one that encouraged me to keep on writing. I settled in, comfortably, for nearly six years. But one day, my boss, a wise mentor named Betty Kray, upset my little apple cart. I apologized for a mistake I'd made and said I hoped she wasn't disappointed in me. She thought a moment, and said, "No. I would be disappointed in you if you were still in this job ten years from now."
I was shocked. Maybe I had grown complacent in a job I needed to outgrow. But what came next? I had not a clue, but once I dared to ask the question, I could see the little cracks appearing in my stable life, and was no longer afraid to consider that small changes might lead to larger ones. Not long after I met the man who was to be my husband, my grandparents in South Dakota died. My mother didn't want to sell their house, the home where she'd grown up. A crazy thought struck me: why couldn't we move there, for a while, until my mother decided what to do? It would be quiet, a good place to write, away from the literary hothouse of New York. This was even crazier than my decision to move to New York. But it seemed right, nonetheless.
And it was. I never could have predicted that my first job would be the last 9-to-5 job I would ever hold, or that for the next thirty years I would survive as a free-lance writer, putting together a crazy-quilt of jobs in order to pay the bills. I didn't even do the practical thing and marry a man with a law degree or MBA. I married another writer, a poet and translator, a refugee from the advertising business. My husband and I are still together, but nearly everything else in our life has changed.
What I have come to think of as "the ten year question" is a good one to keep asking. Who do I want to be in ten years? What do I want my life to look like? It's a question only you can answer. Not your peers, or your teachers, or your parents, although their mentoring can help. Ultimately the decision is yours, and the goal is to live life fully and gratefully, without the burden of regret and fear. You will need to make stable commitments, to marriage, to a family, to a place or vocation. But you will also need to stay restless. If you think you have figured it all out, it's a sure sign that you're stagnating.
After college you may settle into the career you've always dreamed of and learn that it leaves you feeling empty inside. Maybe you'll be so driven to succeed that you will forget to have a life outside of work. Or maybe you'll find that having children alters your idea of what gives life meaning. You may be forced to make a drastic change of plan: many people not much older than you, who entered the job market during the dot.com boom, had to rethink their priorities and reshape their lives when the boom went bust.
Unwelcome events may seize you, health problems, the death of a parent or spouse, a divorce, the loss of a job. Any one of these can be an earthquake, leaving us unsure of the very ground we stand on. Even if we have been fortunate in finding our true calling, in mid-life, we may find that we hit a dry spell, when what sustained us for years no longer works. Conversely, if we have spent our lives in an unfulfilling job, we might seek out new territory. A corporate attorney may turn to teaching or volunteer for the Peace Corps. An insurance executive might become a health care advocate, or teach computer skills to immigrants.
One hard truth of life is that after we've developed our God-given gifts and talents, we are asked in old age to start giving them up. I spend much of my time in the community where my mother lives, where most of the people are over seventy. I've seen a man there confined to his bed who had been a champion swimmer in his youth. I have seen my father, a professional musician, give up the cello he had played for 62 years. I've seen fiercely independent people, like my father, learn to accept help from others. Or not accept it, and lash out, using anger and bitterness to keep them going.
Old age may seem a long way off, and the world will be drastically different when you reach it. Today's technology will seem primitive, and some of you may be living on a space station. But each of us will face the ancient question of whether or not our life has meaning. Why live, if it's only to die? Why bother to become a champion swimmer, or a cellist, if you have to give it up in the end? Why open doors if they only close behind you?
All that you learn in college will help guide you to the answer. And a religious perspective that sees life as a gift from God will help as well. We are meant to shape not only meaningful lives, but holy ones. Indeed, we were created to be friends of God, and prophets. And we can begin this enormous task each day by simply asking for the strength to lead the life to which God has called us.
Ultimately, it is others who will let us know how we are doing, and how we have done. Think of the people in your own life who have blessed you, who have encouraged you, the people for whom you thank God daily. Now ask God to help you become that kind of person yourself, for this should be your education's true aim.
