Wisdom Comes Through Suffering

[Sitaram]

I spent four years at a college where, twice each week, thirty people would sit around a huge table, for 2.5 hours discussing a reading from the "Great Books" in a most serious fashion.

In my Freshman seminar, there was one student, Larry, who for the first several months remained utterly silent. Often, he would lay his head upon his arms for prolonged periods of time.

Finally one day, a professor asked the question, "What did Odysseus learn?"

Suddenly, Larry raised his head. We all sensed that he was about to speak. We sat on the edge of our seats, our eyes wide opened, mouths agape, mentally cheering and encouraging in our silence, "Yes, Larry? Yes!"

And Larry said, "HE LEARNED TO SUFFER!"

And with that, plop, his head went back on his arms for several months.

After those several months of more sullen silence, the professor asked "Why did Achilles act as he did?"

Again, Lo!, Larry's head rose up like some prophet, like some terrible specter, like a vision, like a pillar of fire in Moses' desert.

We all began to tremble in expectation.

And Larry said, "BECAUSE HE WAS A MAN!"

And plop, head down, for the remainder of the year.

Larry had spoken!

 

[SFG75]

LOL-I think I knew that guy, the perpetual freshman right? College does provide a lot of opportunities to see some characters. On my own campus, we had a man who lived out of his car and who looked like Forrest Gump with full facial hair. Everyone avoided the guy, but I would often sit with him and talk to him at the university cafeteria. The guy was very intelligent and held some views that really surprised me. He wasn't as friendly at first, but luckily for me, I was too naive to read things the wrong way when he disagreed like he did. We got to know each other on a good basis, but I wonder what he's doing now. I imagine he's homeless in some park reading The Republic.

 

[Peder]

I've heard it said that experience is a hard teacher, so the wise man learns from someone else's experience.

Open mind,
Peder

 

[Sitaram]

"But for the grace of God, there go I" (something my mother used to say).

We had one fellow who was described as a sociological wonder: he had completed four different freshman years in four different colleges.

There was someone else who graduated St. Johns, but repeated each year twice.

 

[Sitaram]

I often wonder if Larry is still alive. He was a fellow student, living in my dorm building. He only lasted one year. He did not want to study or do the readings. Writing poetry was his thing. In those days, writing poetry was my thing too. A Greek professor who knew of Larry's interest suggested that he approach me. I was shocked when he asked me about my poetry, since I had not mentioned to anyone that I wrote. But that Greek professor served as admissions director, so he knew each students high school activities.

Larry was sullen and sulky and moody. I visited his room only once, and he showed me a gorgeous, expensive set of illustrated J.R.R. Tolkein (spelling?) books. I had tried to read Tolkein in high school, but in the opening pages, I saw the thing about the Saks-Bagenzie (sp?) family being S.B. or (S.O.B.) and I put the book down as being shallow. Perhaps I should have given it more of a chance. At the end of the year, when he was withdrawing from school and leaving, his relatives came. It seemed like his family was well-to-do and that he had been indulged by several women relatives who were hovering about him, comforting him, and making excuses for his failure.

Imagine, if you were on a college rowing team. You are in a boat with 20 people, each one has an oar in hand, nineteen of them are rowing their brains out, and one is just sitting their motionless, pouting, sulking. Thats what it was like to be in class with Larry. I didn't hate the guy. I felt sorry for him. He never really showed me a poem, but just recited a few lines. What he recited sounded like a Dylan Thomas knock-off. What can I say.

Towards the end of that Freshman year, Larry stopped coming to classes altogher. I felt some concern for the direction his life was going. I saw him in the halls, and he invited me into his room and explained that he had been drinking. I got the impression that he was using alcohol as an excuse for failure, a crutch. I think he felt it was fashionable to drink and sulk like a suffering artist. Larry's suffering was self-imposed, meaningless suffering, suffering to no greater end or goal, and not the sort of suffering from which wisdom comes.

Let's face it. Let's be honest with ourselves. Deep down, we all want to be God, or Hemingway, or James Bond. As a teenager, I read Hemingway's Moveable Feast, and thought to myself "Wow! I want to live in Paris, and wear a beret, and sit in caberets and write short stories and sip cafe au lait and see my work published in the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. I'm sure that Larry wanted the same thing that I wanted, that we all want; recognition, success, fame, power.

Larry didn't really want to work for it. He wanted everything to jump in his lap. I was willing to work for it, and did work, very hard, but never succeeded in winning public acclaim and popularity.


How valuable is public acclaim and popularity really? As a child, I was mesmerized by the radio broadcasts of humorist Allen Shephard. In his last years, Shephard was a sinking star, and Howard Stern, who did not possess even a fraction of Shephard's genius, was a rising star. Howard Stern is little more than a pandering pimp having a bad hair day, who could never measure up to the creative genius and originality of an Allen Shephard.


The 1930's saw "Anthony Adverse" as a best seller. Nowadays, many people have never heard of the book or its author. How many best sellers of yesteryear suffer that same fate of obscurity?

 

[Sitaram]

Someone once said:

"A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude or the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security."


Is it the case that character is forged or is it merely revealed?


Sometimes, I think we are an onion to be peeled. Othertimes, I think we are a potatoe to be baked. There are some eternal mysteries which are not worth stewing over. Thinking is what causes most problems in the first place, if you want my opinion. At least, that's what I think.


In the Upanishads, God is definitely an onion, to be peeled away layer after layer with the knife of "Neti Neti" (not this, not this) on the cutting board of apophatic theology.


For King Solomon, man is definitely a potatoe to be baked in the fire of adversity:

"Every son whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges those whom He receives, and casts their soul into the fire of adversity until they reach a seven-fold purity."


Now, Hell is definitely not a fast-food chain, because the potatoes are never done. But, if it WERE, I would definitely order everything "to go."


And peeling an onion is a tearful, sorrowful task. And, what do we look for as we peel? All I ever find is, more onion, more onion, until finally, I find no-onion-non-being at the core and center and heart of things.