What Do You Want to Do with Your Life?

It's a misleading question, really, something you've heard from the moment you sat down to Career Day in elementary school (all the fathers and mothers patiently explaining that mysterious adult world to wide-eyed students - we thought it was fascinating once, before we understood the truth) to the time you step into the "real world," suit and tie buttoned up like a well-dressed monkey at the organ grinder (and I use that last word with all its accompanying connotations). Repeated again and again, interrogated, picked apart, spelled out in Lego pieces of little firemen and police officers tramping off to work. Their place in life. What they do. That unfathomable something from 9 to 5.

Well, that something slowly crystallizes, and the rose-tinted glasses fall from your eyes...and you realize, in fact, the question was never completely true (the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...if only we had lawyers back then), at least, as it was posed so innocently when you first sat down during circle time to share The Rest of Your Life (tm) as you knew it from the sandbox that delineated your entire world back then. Perhaps I might have been inclined to protest if I knew the truth, but looking back, I can't fault the adults for their deception. After all, "What do you want to do with your life?" seemed a perfectly transparent question from their point of view. The view that knew all the caveats which defined "what" and "do" and "want" and "your life," that is.

So perhaps it's time to rephrase the question. Perhaps it's time to let Gorgias take the stand. (You'll forgive me for the poor imitation, but we all have our shortcomings.) "What do you want to do with your life?" becomes, in so many words, "What makes you a worthwhile member of this society?"

...And that's the truth. Simple, right? For those of you already in the work world or otherwise trundling your way happily towards it (as the yellow Lego police man does each day, never shedding his organ grinder suit), it seems second nature. Not even worthy of mention. Of course I am a member of this society, and of course I must do this thing that makes me worthy of belonging. How else could we interpret the question? There are reasons the hand that feeds becomes the Stockholm syndrome that defines the rest of your life, ad nauseum.

But back then, do you think we as children would understand...I mean really, really understand...the ramifications of such a statement? Do you think that we would realize - and accept - the way our future goals were written for us? And even then, when all is said and done, could we ever imagine agreeing to it for...the rest...of our lives? The child who wants to be his hero so stylized cannot comprehend where poetic license ends and humdrum life, mundanity, that accursed repetition begins (for I am convinced Hell is repetition, merely entrapment in a plane one dimension short of what we were meant to live in). And what is this, this "rest" of your life? This "passion" they say you must find and then cling to like a jealous lover bent on squeezing every last drop from your heart's deliverance? (I imagine that domestic abuse awareness month ribbon staring ominously at me from the tabletop could say something to its powers). Even if it were possible to give so much of myself, I would not do it. A love of that sort, no matter how precious, demands something from you that you can never reclaim, and leaves something with you that you can never attain. It is the irony of specialization. Narrow alleyways once visited. Each cog, no matter how finely grained, can never become a perfect circle.

Ah, so then, let us return to the question as it was meant to be asked. As we believed it to be, naive and trusting, back when our worst fears lay in the pages of an R.L. Stine book.

What do you want to do with your life?

I'll tell you now. And if you ask me again, I'll tell you something different. Don't try to find convergence, because the question has no answer, it by its very nature cannot be answered, for who is to say that one of an infinite sphere of possibilities should be chosen out of the universes we cohabit? The very arrogance of that assumption pales my (admittedly deliberate) appropriation of Greek philosophy's mouthpiece. I can only tell you this moment, all the moments that I desire to experience, and ask for no more.

I want to sit beneath a willow tree painting the African cliffs at sunset.

I want to ride the wisps of song through an untouched glade.

I want to step off the edge of Babel with the sun in my eyes.

I want every climax that froze, for just a second, time in its tracks and laid bare the lucidity which led Sisyphus to smile as he descended the mountaintop.

Life is simulated annealing. So says the e-mail signature of a professor of mine. Well, if that is what living was meant to be, then God help me...but all of us deserve more than just an algorithm to abide our existences by.

Socrates gets Tenure

I've been remiss in posting to this journal, despite the flurry of ideas - both new and backlogged from more than a year ago - that have inspired the muse. Work and an increasing cynicism with the university setting have taken their toll on me; not too long ago, I might have brushed this off as just a temporary setback, but it seems nowadays I grow more and more convinced that the ennui is a symptom of an underlying, pervasive, and integrally fatal flaw with the system itself.

So, as is my mind's wont when it finds itself pitted against a dilemma it cannot resolve, a character emerges from the depths of imagination, woven to "act out," if you will, an alternative reality that rebels against the current scheme. A satire with (I hope) all the trappings of Greek irony wrapped up in modern day humor. I'll spare you the pretentious introduction and get to the title of this piece - Socrates gets Tenure.

Yes, take our favorite Greek philosopher and transport him from the halls of Athens to those of any modern-day college (a liberal arts one for added irony), with all the trials and tribulations that face every newly minted professor traversing the bowels of the education system. Let the administration review his application for tenure, let them assign him classes, critique his research, let the true politics of this university that we speak of come to light when the philosopher whose work stands at the center of the School of Athens (having been a mentor to Plato) is only recognized as that curious old man with his outdated, idealistic concepts about teaching and dialogue.

With regards to the actual details of the story, I am unfortunately vague, although several scenes come sequentially to light. The first, a meeting of the administration to review his application - questions about his interests (too broad, they say, and current trends in philosophy steer away from such purist interpretations), his publications (all transcriptions by a single student? Not a journal to be printed in?), his qualifications for the job (certainly questionable, given he never officially received a degree - though it does take a...unique sort of man to face off against the highest politicians in Greece). Ultimately his application would have been unanimously rejected, if not for the university's need for funding of its philosophy department...parading a guest professor, who apparently achieved some fame in his home country, around campus when the solicitations went out would certainly be beneficial (not to mention bolstering their diversity agenda).

Besides which, Socrates never did name a salary figure.

Conditioning his entrance on his political clashes with the rhetoricians and the heads of state, the school quickly regrets its mistake. This old man, stolidly walking the grounds in his old robes and sandals, never once writing down his contemplations, who when asked why his entire PHIL100 class is sitting outside on the mall with bread and wine (Heaven forbid!) rather than studiously pursuing the curriculum, replied simply that they were "helping him with his research." But they are not graduate students! comes the response. If you needed an assistant, we could have easily procured several Ph.D candidates from within the department. And Socrates would proceed to question them on the merits of this ranking, or rather, the merits of teaching based on this ranking via some strange "degree" the university conjured. Isn't the meaning of a good life universal? What about love? If I were to seek the nature of Eros, I should most certainly question those who have experienced it firsthand. But they are not ready, the perplexed bureaucrat replies, it's just not done...though he cannot say why. And in the ensuing Gorgias, clarity shines down on who is truly the one who lies unprepared.

Of course, Socrates himself is not exempt from this clash of ideals. A visit to the Greek societies of today would be eye-opening, and I can see another Plato's Symposium coming of this (he is, after all, said to be able to hold his alcohol quite well). On the other hand, his political views would probably draw unwanted attention...the philosopher king, so imagined, must rub several groups on campus the wrong way. Obtuse assignments, refusal to grade; hah, his Pick-A-Prof profile must be a comedy in itself. But ultimately, I believe the students will warm to him - this creature of the ivory tower, yet apart from it - and find some commonality with Socrates that they could never achieve with the other professors, so intrinsically linked as they are to the intellectual hierarchy of the university.

Two characters come to mind at this point: one, a senior who majored in Undecided and minored in Getting a Job, would be particularly drawn to this unconventional man...and perhaps even become his Plato in the modern world, recording Socrates' exploits. Having spent his entire life doing what others told him would make him successful (but without ever knowing, or daring to voice what he truly cared for), he reaches his final semester and suddenly balks at departing. Not because he cares for the school, you see, but rather because remaining in stasis is the least difficult of the choices - retaking old classes, avoiding the final credits, sitting in a loophole of the bureaucracy so they can never quite force him out. Several semesters go by like this, with the university getting more and more irate, until he meets Socrates...and a profound change begins. I'll leave the details for another time. The other character I'd like to include is the solitary ancient Greek philosophy professor, a bit wearied by the system, discontent, unable quite to level with his colleagues the same way over research anymore, as narrow and abstract as it has become, when philosophy originally was about very much the entire world. He is the only one who recognizes Socrates for who he truly is - suspects, at first, but suspicions confirmed over time and deed. As he tries to mediate between our visitor from Athens and the administration, gradually he recognizes the futility of the entire arrangement.

In the end, as the title suggests, Socrates does indeed get tenure - after being denied again and again, nearly fired several times, it is ultimately an inane and utterly serendipitous, if you could call it that, side effect of his actions at the university that lead to his approval by the review board. (I haven't yet come up with a suitably ironic twist yet, though I've been mulling several possibilities). And what does he do then? Why, reject it, of course! As politely and impertinently as he always has in the dialogues rejected such offerings from above. It turns out another person was submitting that application for him, unaware, to prove a point that only he knew.

But now, he must return to Greece. A true philosopher, Socrates says, is not bound by the walls of a single institution - he, by his very nature, cannot exist in an institution. The knowledge he pursues cannot be discovered by simply wading among the insular books.

And that is why, though he has certainly enjoyed this dance with the paper trail here (tongue firmly in cheek), he must regretfully turn down the offer of a place within these ivory doors.