The Gift of Time

It is an unfortunate fact that could all very well end up disgruntled septuagenarians. We might end up angry at the world, angry at ourselves, outraged at our own lack of ingenuity, creativity, inspiration, and daring. We may look back on our seven decades on Earth and think, “I fucked it up.” We could realize that most of the choices we made were royal mistakes, decisions made without prescience, without passion, and without purpose. We will then have to live the rest of our days with the acknowledgment that we wasted our lives.
Each of us has only one life to live; we are bound by the constraints of time. Time is our scarcest, most precious resource. Pithy adages tell us that time is a terrible thing to waste, and to seize the day (carpe diem!), reminding of the fleeting nature of time. Trite and cliché though they may be, they are truisms too often neglected in higher education, and so on into life. Not until my senior year at my liberal arts college was I pressed to consider that I may be wasting time, frittering it away with trivialities and concerns of no real significance. It was a painful idea to test.
But test it I did, or at least, I have tried. As time ticks away - I graduate in six months – I’ve undertaken the project of critiquing the years I have spent at college. Thus far, the process has been enriching, but tinged with regret. At times, I have been mindful in my decision making and conscientious in my use of time. Other times, I have either lazily wasted away hours or I have been in an all-out war against the clock. How I could have better spent my four years at school? What questions could I, should I, have asked? What efforts could I have made to improve, in so many academic and extracurricular areas? What would I do differently if I could begin again? I am more thoughtful, more deliberate, and more discriminating than I was at eighteen, but I am just as apt to make detrimental mistakes as ever. How am I now to best plan for my future? What sins of omission and commission can I prevent for myself, and for anyone else who cares to listen to the musings of a college senior?
When I was a first-year student, I idolized the seniors. They seemed so worldly, so self-assured, so adult. Now I stand in their shoes, and as ever, I realize how severely I misinterpreted things. The proverbial grass is always greener…and smarter, more confident, more knowledgeable, more responsible, and on and on. I cannot claim to be qualitatively different or better now than a year, two years, or three years ago. However, I believe I can accurately claim to have learned some things these past few years. If any underclassmen have stumbled upon my soliloquy, I hope that they do not view this as an accusatory sermon. I write as an injunction of myself, hoping that my readers might glean some wisdom from the lessons I am learning.
I have composed a list of thou-shall’s and thou-shalt-not’s, both addressed to my present and future self, and with an audience of liberal arts undergraduate students in mind. Regardless of where a student chooses to matriculate, he or she may harbor some aspiration to a liberal education, so a definition of such an education begs mention. In my humble estimation, liberal education is complex, and not all institutions that proclaim to offer a liberal arts education have a clear definition, shared by faculty, administration, and students, as to what a liberal education is and what it entails.
I propose that a liberal education is not limited to four collegiate years; neither is it only attainable at “liberal arts” schools. Liberal education is a lifelong arduous academic and personal process, an engagement of the whole being in the development of identity and self-hood through the rigorous study of the breadth and depth of human ideas. It is not complete if limited by a predilection toward a particular culture, location, religion, philosophy, or epoch. A student limited by his or her, or his or her professors’, biases toward experiential particularities (i.e., the Western world, Western literary tradition, European history, Christianity, etc.) will have considerable difficulty attaining a liberal education, as I have defined it. A student negligent and wasteful of time will likewise face obstacles on the path to becoming liberally educated. A liberal education requires that those who desire it recognize the value of time, and the value of events and relationships that occur within its constraints.
And so, I give a time-focused “ten commandments” for liberal arts learners. It is a list of things I wish I had been told prior to beginning my liberal education process, a list which I hope can engender in readers a sense of the responsibility and duty that are incumbent upon those who aspire to be liberally educated. [It asks that individuals question themselves and their worlds. Time is best spent in such endeavors].
1. Liberal education is not truly liberal unless it eliminates the human tendency to hate and mistrust. If an individual is able, at the end of his formal education, to reason his way to hatred of another individual or collective, then he is guilty of having misdirected his efforts and he has not been liberally educate. Liberal education debases any justification for hatred, it renders mistrust unjustifiable. It would behoove the liberal arts student to enter her education with a critical eye on her own biases. It is a waste of time to spend the collegiate years rationalizing one’s bigotry. Liberal education is only liberal if it breaks dismantles the penchant to prejudge.
2. Time is often best spent in a state of discomfort. Out of discomfort arises a need to search, to question, and to learn. More often than not, liberal education should make its students uncomfortable.
3. Similarly, liberal education, if thorough, should make one feel marginalized. An understanding of the spectrum of human experience is unattainable unless one learns what it means to feel outcast, ostracized, and forgotten. A liberal arts learner must try to discover what it is to be marginalized. He cannot presume to call himself liberally educated if he has not.
4. Moments of clarity and confidence should be followed by periods of self-doubt. Time is well-spent by the individual who faces a torrent of questions, a deluge of ideas that necessitate self-analyzation. The one who extends her academic queries into all areas of her personal, relational, and spiritual life is engaged in a genuine process of liberal education.
5. A liberally educated student engages in a unique process such as few people will ever think to commence. It is oftentimes a harrowing path, the obstacles of which, when surpassed, are able to make one feel proud. Time is misused if spent wallowing in self-importance. The liberal arts student must realize that he is, in fact, small. He is one human being with many rights as any other. To avoid developing a big head, it is important that circumstances sometimes make him feel insignificant and inadequate. Time is best spent in humility.
6. In humility, one develops an appreciation for her ignorance. The liberal arts learner experiences an indirect relationship between the amount of time she has devoted to study, and the amount of things she feels she knows. Rigorous study teaches humans of their own ignorance. A humble acceptance that one may not know everything is crucial for respectful engagement, especially with those with whom one may thoroughly disagree.
7. Learners must be willing to be hurt, and must develop strong self-reliance in order to ‘pick up the pieces.’ A liberal arts student doesn’t run from trials, but should go sprinting headlong into new, different, and difficult situations. Profound learning happens through suffering.
8. As with an understanding of one’s own ignorance, liberal education can sometimes lead to self-dislike. Students mustn’t be afraid of this, but should also determine when such dislike is appropriate. When one realizes one’s own lack of compassion, lack of honesty, lack of motivation, lack of discipline, it is justifiable that one will experience a phase of self-hatred. This is good, for self-hatred is the closest thing to self-love. If one doesn’t, at times, dislike oneself, then she probably doesn’t like herself much, either. Scrutiny indicates a deep caring for one’s self and one’s soul.
9. A liberal arts learner should yearn for situations, places, and peoples who are wholly outside the realm of what is comfortable, safe, and secure. Radical self-development can occur in places and conceptual frameworks least like home. A student should occasionally force himself away from home.
10. One engaged in a process of liberal education must never remain in a state of “arrival.” If one feels he has “arrived,” and never decides to leave, the dynamic wondering that fundamentally characterizes liberal education ceases. True liberal education is as active of an endeavor as can be found. To passively sit on one’s laurels, clinging strongly to ideas without thought of transformation, is antithetical to the liberal arts ideal.
Liberal education is a process without an end. To engage in it, one must have courage, discipline, fortitude, and a deep care for oneself, one’s family and friends, and for those he or she has yet to or may never meet. It is an individual commitment: to be responsible, to be watchful, to be disciplined, to be gently forceful. No institution can provide a liberal education; no one person or entity can presume to develop another’s soul. Liberal education is a deeply personal, transformative experience not contained to four collegiate years. A liberal arts learner never stops learning, never stops seeking, and never stops questioning.
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made of.” –Benjamin Franklin
Liberal education engenders love of life, and implores people not to squander their time. My collegiate experience has taught me how my time will be best used. I shall spend my days in curiosity.