I think that the old man who sits here to teach you ought to devote his skill not to save you from being low-minded, and from reasoning about yourselves in a low and ignoble spirit, but rather to prevent young men from arising of the type who, discovering their kinship with the gods, and seeing that we have these fetters attached to us in the shape of the body and its possessions and all that we find necessary for the course and management of our life by reason of the body, may desire to fling all these away as vexatious and useless burdens and so depart to the gods their kindred.
Whenever I make an attempt at teaching, my instinctive fear is that I will fail to make any mark. This can be rather misleading for me, since I should never assume that education is about somehow “imprinting” knowledge on others; we are all the agents of our own understanding, and the teacher is only one occasion for committing to that work of self-awareness.
Still, will I be offering the best assistance that I can? Hard experience has shown me that most students are not listening to me of their own choice, and so they are hardly inclined to pay me much heed. I see a good number come in unreflective, simply going through the motions, and I then see a good number leave unreflective, having jumped through the hoops as their masters have commanded.
I sometimes feel discouraged that they might end up just settling for a life of thoughtless consumption and gratification, that it may not occur to them how they are free to live on very different terms. It doesn’t help any when I have a group of bitter colleagues who cynically refer to their own students as “the herd of grazing animals.”
I must remember that people are in their own unique places, and that they will decide to make their changes when they are good and ready. If I have done my best, and I have still not tickled an interest, I have, at least, done them no harm.
What could be far worse is if I manage to grab on to a smidgeon of truth, twist it out of shape, and present it so poorly that I end up encouraging folks to hate this life, instead of encouraging them to love it. Better to have little effect, than be an accomplice in breeding yet another form of resentment.
I have seen the sort of intellectual misery that Epictetus describes, sometimes in others, and sometimes in myself.
Start with a noble ideal, whether it be called the Truth, or Virtue, or God, and then dress it up to be so glorious that it exists only far away from everyday life, demanding that we feel disgust for what is common. It is now a wonderful abstraction, and we can’t wait to run away from the real world to live out our fantasies.
If I am telling people that they must always be angry at the way things are, I am forgetting that an acceptance of the way things are is a condition for growing up.
If I am preaching that everything is suffering, I haven’t carefully looked at anything.
If I am insisting that it must get better in some next life, I am neglecting to live this life with any responsibility.
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