Author’s Note: This is fourth and final part in a mini-series on education.
His name is James, and he is my son. He was born last weekend on June 12th, and he’s currently swinging in the living room with my wife, while I sequester myself in the study for a while to hunch over a keyboard and stare into a monitor of light as I write this column.
What better way to finish this series on education than in this context of sacrifice.
I don’t write from a position of arrogance or superiority, but from a genuine desire to celebrate and to share that celebration of life, to put words to the realities we all face, to let it all run through me instead of stopping up like a sewer.
The beauty, wonder, and power of life is like a mountain stream that picks up its pace, the further downstream you are, the more power it brings. If you intend to sit alongside it and enjoy it for yourself, be my guest, but you should know there’s no parking on the dance floor.
Everything I know and have experienced is a gift that runs through me and brings me joy, which is meant to cause me to be in awe of my Maker and tickle me on the way through.
The conversation of education is the most fundamental, to me, because it is talking about the very process of interfacing with this mountain stream.
It is not easy, nor is it very intuitive.
The process of enjoying that stream is one of sacrifice. Everything in life worth having came as a result of a sacrifice. Consistency doesn’t come from discipline; it comes from love and passion. Discipline by itself turns into duty, which turns sour quicker than milk in the sun on a Georgia day in August.
Why sacrifices are worth making is a curious question to ask and not something we can understand about ourselves without some third-party help. But let’s beg that question: why do we make sacrifices for honing our minds and ears and thoughts and hearts in decades of schooling?
It’s because life is, to change analogies, like the most perfect pitcher in the world who throws scalding fast pitches that smoke the air and defy physics, dipping and curving at the last, but won’t throw a pitch you can’t catch.
Life is like a pitcher who has the ability to throw pitches that make your awe actually bubble out of your skin in goose bumps, but he throttles down on it if you don’t have the skill to make the catch.
So what do you do?
Two options: train yourself to catch better, or be happy with boring, slow, straight pitches.
Most people actually take the second option, mainly because they don’t actually see life this way. To them, life is a ball coming toward them they have to dodge. (Vision is everything.)
But let’s say we actually do have the courage and whimsy to choose the first; there are two motives. One way to motivate ourselves is by discipline. We know we want to catch those pitches, so we hunker down and grind it out until we graduate. But discipline only gets you through a chapter, not the whole novel. Eventually there comes a chapter called “Cheats on spouse”, or, “Steals from employer”, and the whole thing turns sour. Every last ounce of effort gone in a moment of weakness.
But everybody ought to know that discipline only ever leads to stress, and stress eventually causes a fracture. The only lasting motivation is one that feeds itself.
Love doesn’t lead to fracture; quite the opposite. It strengthens and leads to passion.
This is the second way to learn to catch those perfect pitches.
I love James, so I will sacrifice everything for him, but not just today or tomorrow, or this chapter, but for the whole book. Not because I’m so good at disciplining myself or putting others first, but because I love him, which by definition means I want his life and his joy and his experience of that mountain stream to exceed my own. I want him to train hard to get this vision of life and use it, because I know the joy and lasting passion that comes with it—so I will push him hard.
You see that kind of love in that actual context in Ben Carson’s mom, of whom he speaks openly, to whom he attributes his success and motivation for excellence. Love. It turns the world on its head and keeps the chapters going, even after the chapters where discipline implodes on itself.
"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." ~Antoine de Saint Exupery
This may be the last in this series, but by no means are we done talking about education and things of deeper meaning. These topics are here to stay, not because I have an axe to grind, but because if I am to continue writing for love, then that is the way the pitch is coming at me. I’m just the catcher.