Basketball hitting a basketball goal. Photo Credit: noahsilliman, Wikimedia Commons.
Periodically, I revisit Calvin and Hobbes to renew my sense of wonder. The comic strip finished its run well before my time, but in its anthologized forms it has been a touchstone for my life. Growing up in Singapore and Dubai, where the heat often precluded outdoor boyhood adventures, I lived vicariously through the comic’s depiction of changing seasons and quiet Midwestern escapades. Returning to it now, I do recapture some of those memories, and I can also savor some of the (often philosophical) humor in ways I couldn’t when I was younger. But I also realize that not all the strips are that good – how could they be? The jokes often fall flat, at best eliciting an amused exhale through the nose. At times (depending on my mood) I find the sentimental strips too sentimental, the clever strips too pat. But the presence of the mediocre material sets off the quality of the good pieces in a clearer light, like the setting around a gem – and the less enjoyable strips are not so much “filler” as essential parts of an organized body of work. Indeed, from the perspective of a creative writer, I can say that quantity of production not only tends to put quality work in a more flattering light, but is indeed necessary to the production of such work. The consistent putting-out of pieces that are just “okay” is essential practice for putting out pieces that are great. Nothing is wasted.
In other words, Calvin and Hobbes holds lessons for us as students and scholars. In life in general, and perhaps especially as university students in our age of social media, there can be a tendency to focus on the “highlight reels” of life, the great achievements, the rewards and accolades, the enjoyments and adventures. The surrounding monotony of busyness, of routines and never-ending duties, can seem like so much filler. But the highlights only make sense in the context of the rest of the game. Quantity serves as a point of reference for quality, and indeed as preparation, as practice, for quality – the skills we cultivate in “ordinary” life are the toolkit we will have to fall back on when moments of crisis (whether positive or negative) come. We must be comfortable with smooth sailing to keep our heads in stormy weather.
Part of my motivation in writing the above comes from the mood of a senior nearing graduation. I find myself treasuring parts of the Columbia experience I might previously have dismissed as “filler” – not only classes, but also the brick walkways, the brass dials above the Butler elevators, the lawns newly green in the spring. But there is an even more specific relationship between the observations above and the life of scholars at Columbia. The knowledge-seeking endeavor demands an intimate familiarity with not only the highlights of a given discipline or subject matter, but with its filler material. As much as we may be tempted to accelerate and find shortcuts, there is no substitute for time spent immersed in a subject. I can testify to this as far as language learning goes; a summer spent in Korea catalyzed my abilities in that language far more than detached study alone.
To continue in the vein of the artistic analogies above, there is an odd way in which we become more attached to a TV show or to a book series than to a single book or movie – or, when we are attached to the latter, we express it through multiple rewatches or rereads. In this sense, knowledge – even academic knowledge – is relational and time-dependent, just as getting to know a person means not just looking at their resume or their social media, their personal highlight reels, but spending time in their presence and so absorbing a good deal of “filler.”
This relational aspect to knowledge also helps us filter out what we are really passionate about. Your friends are those who have decided they can tolerate you in the middle of all your filler material. The real fan watches not only the highlight reel, but the whole game. The scholar who endures long hours of study to master the details of a field that others consider neither interesting nor valuable has shown genuine dedication – and, which is more, is in a position to make an original contribution.
This point about making a contribution is essential. When we have found our passions, whatever they might be, we cannot help speaking about them. And when we speak about them well, we might inspire the same passion in others. True, any speech act, piece of art, or essay functions as a highlight reel, masking the hours of monotony that led to its creation – and so it is bound to inspire some fair-weather fans, some whose interest in the topic at hand will quickly fade. But they will soon find that out themselves, and those with whom that passion resonates will find it out by their own perseverance. Regardless of the effect our sharing has on those who listen, we cannot share our passions, the things we know so well, without sharing something of ourselves. From Ray Bradbury, I learned about carnivals and the macabre – but I certainly learned less about them than I did about myself, and about writing, and about Ray Bradbury. Notoriously private as Bill Watterson is, one cannot read all of Calvin and Hobbes without the sense of knowing some of the artist’s heart. And the best scholarly writing I have read has the same effect, contains a visible passion that leaves you not only knowing a discipline more intimately, but also feeling that you know the writer.
In a blog post from last May, Jonathan Tanaka (a good friend of mine, and one of last year’s Rose fellows) took up Kant’s call of Sapere aude, “Dare to know!” – encouraging us to think and reason courageously. Without presuming to add to Jonathan’s – or Kant’s – exhortations, let me restate it with a Classics spin, pulling together all the threads from above, and encourage you also with this: Cognoscere aude. Sapere and cognescere could both be translated “to know” – the difference in nuance between the two, preserved in modern languages like French and Spanish, is that sapere means “to know” in an intellectual sense, whereas cognoscere means “to know” in an experiential sense. Sapere can be used of knowing a fact; cognoscere is used of knowing a person. My challenge to the students reading this post is not only to have the courage to think bravely, but to feel bravely: to be passionate about their areas of study, to know them not only by intellection, but by experience. This means being brave enough to speak about them, to put out some filler material – to write bad essays at times, to try out risky lines of thought – and so risk being known to your readers. This takes courage, but it also will lead to a much greater satisfaction – the satisfaction of knowing that you have created, not only consumed; that you have not only watched the highlight reel, but played the game.