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ADVICE AND DISSENT
This section features discussions on education, learning and teaching, and language with particular focus on English. The primary subjects to be taken up here are notable advocacies and contrary viewpoints in these disciplines and their allied fields. Our primary aim is to clarify matters and issues of importance to language and learning, provide intelligent and useful instruction, promote rational and critical thinking, and enhance the individual’s overall capacity for discernment.
As one goes way past the prime of one’s life
Now in what he calls the grandparent stage of life, former English professor and prolific book writer Joseph Epstein looks back to the important stages in his existence on this planet. In “The Symphony of a Lifetime,” an essay published in the Spring 2010 issue of the Notre Dame Magazine, the former editor of The American Scholar says that he thinks of himself as lucky person, and that whatever regrets he might have “reside in the small-change department.” And what might those regrets be?
Epstein enumerates them wistfully: “I wish I had learned how to play piano, if only so that I could play for myself the enchanting melodies of Maurice Ravel. I wish I had learned ancient Greek, so that I could read many of the writers I love in their own language. My life has never been about money-making, but I nonetheless wish I had been able to accumulate enough money early in life so as not to have to think about it, a condition I am clearly not likely to arrive at at this point. I even, first time round, married the wrong woman, yet this (one would think) grave mistake resulted in talented and thoughtful children and grandchildren.”
To get rid of the anxiety that comes with the onset of old age, Epstein then contemplates the advice of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), who, based on his own reading of him, he considers the world’s first psychiatrist. Epicurus’s advice in summary is this: forget about God, death, pain and acquisition and your worries are over. Ultimately, however, Epstein asks himself: “Even if it did work, would such utter detachment from life, from its large questions and daily dramas, constitute a life rich and complex enough to be worth living? Many people would say yes. I am myself not among them.”
Read Joseph Epstein’s “The Symphony of a Lifetime” in the Notre Dame Magazine now!
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