Would you let this idiot teach in a university?

Remember the following line from yesterday?

All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them

The essay noted that it was from "the writer Isak Dinesen."

That's it. The essayist simply assumes that blokes like me would recognize the name Isak Dinesen.

So, of course, I had to Google; what other option did I have!

Do you see why I thought I made a mistake?  I search for Isak Dinsen, and the first in the list is Karen Blixen.  Pseudonym.

The plot was getting thicker.

Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, her account of living in Kenya, and one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into highly acclaimed, Academy Award-winning motion pictures. Prior to the release of the first film, she was noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, for which she is also known in Denmark.

Boy don't I feel like a fool!  She is the one from Out of Africa?  The one that I was talking about the other day because my daughter was just at Masai Mara?

I then did a Google search for "Karen Blixen Kenya" and, wait, there are coffee plantations and a gazillion other things with her name?  And all this is the famed Masai Mara part of Kenya?

And, my, what a colorful and rich life she had!

"Isak" was appropriate: Blixen's emergence as a writer was indeed late and unexpected. She had returned to Denmark in 1931, stony broke – her marriage was finished; her African coffee farm had failed; her romantic lover, big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, had died in a plane crash. Although she had written much earlier – her first stories were published when she was barely 20 – she'd chosen marriage and Africa over writing; but that life was now finished. At 46, she must have been feeling both desolate and desperate; but also, evidently, boiling with creative energy.

It is amazing how every day is a revelation of how little I know.  I am amazed that they let me teach!  In a university!

Everybody hurts, sometimes ...

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them”

I read that in this essay a few days ago.  I knew I would come back to that because it is such a powerful line.
A powerful idea.
A powerful way to approach the sorrows in life.

Today, I came back to it.  Because, a friend had posted on Facebook that today--February 4th--is World Cancer Day.

Now, think about the people you know who have cancer.
Had cancer.
Their sorrows.
The sorrows of their friends and families.

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them”

To tell a story, or to put them in a story does not have to have a literal meaning. It can mean something as simple as to merely talk about that sorrow.

There is no pressure to move on. There is no shame in intensity or duration. Sadness, regret, confusion, yearning and all the experiences of grief become part of the narrative of love ...

My life's simple sorrows have often become stories in their own ways in my writings here and elsewhere.  Sorrows that have completely jolted me have also become a part of my writings--though not always with explicit references to those sorrows.

Life is full of sufferings of many different sorts.

When a toddler falls while running, she cries. That story is told. Which is perhaps why the toddler ends up laughing a few minutes later. Sometimes even a few seconds after the crying.  We become adults and we forget that lesson. The lesson that:

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them”

A sorrow is a sorrow.

How big a sorrow it is depends on how we are able to put them in a story.  But, no sorrow is trivial.  All we can do is to hold on.  Because, everybody hurts sometimes.

Well, everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries
Everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes
So hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

I think I am an intellectual. Yet, I don't ask for more money?

If it is February, well, it means that I am done with taxes.  Yes, I am!  It also means that discussions begin, in the loudest possible tones, on how to use those tax monies.

Which is why it was no surprise to read an email earlier today, from the "comrades," that it is time to lobby the legislators.

Your salary, your benefits, your retirement, your class size, and your teaching load are all at stake.

Why do they keep providing me with fodder for my blog, when my plate is already overflowing with the topics I want to understand and write about?  At this rate, I will never get to string theory! ;)

That sentence in the email is debatable at so many levels.  If the true goal is to educate students, then do have conclusive evidence that a class size of, say, ten, is better than a class size of forty?  How about fifty?  What is the appropriate salary for a faculty?  How do we measure faculty productivity in teaching in order to relate it to the compensation?  What is an appropriate teaching load?  Why not more?  Why not less?  All these are merely about that one sentence, and the email had a lot more.

Of course, I didn't reply to that email.  Why should I when I have experienced over the years the "disdain" the "comrades" have for my ideas and opinions!

The claim that we intellectuals deserve to be paid more always reminds of me a classic essay that I read a long time ago.  I bet the "comrades" will go further berserk when I quote, ready for this?, Robert Nozick.  In a wonderful essay, polemical no doubt, Nozick wrote there:

Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. But, by and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals.

Faculty, how much ever pretentious they might be as intellectuals, feel entitled to high earnings, and power, and prestige.

Why then do contemporary intellectuals feel entitled to the highest rewards their society has to offer and resentful when they do not receive this? Intellectuals feel they are the most valuable people, the ones with the highest merit, and that society should reward people in accordance with their value and merit. But a capitalist society does not satisfy the principle of distribution “to each according to his merit or value.”

Imagine me telling this to the "comrades."  I won't be alive to blog after, and you will miss my posts ;)

Ironically, a couple of weeks ago, during a class discussion when students remarked about happiness and incomes, I reminded them that high incomes don't guarantee higher levels of happiness.  I told them that if the empirical studies are correct, then I am now earning pretty much the income when happiness apparently peaks.  "No wonder I am always kidding around and sharing horrible groaners" I told them.

Anyway, I went about my business.  I closed the door at the noon hour and had my favorite lunch from home.  You know, the whole grilled ciabatta routine.  Today, I even included thinly sliced red onions.  Boy was it yummy!  The honeycrisp apple was even yummier.

I opened the door to go brush my teeth.  And there it was in the box right outside my office door:

You think I really care for more salary and benefits at this point?  And, if that was my goal in life, you think I would have ditched electrical engineering?

I am one richly paid educator.  Thank you!

A note here, a chocolate bar there, and I am all set.  This term is already a success.