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A box of books, roomier shelves, and past selves

Yesterday, I filled a box halfway with books that I’ll be taking to Half Price Books this morning. Now, I’m a fan of Umberto Eco’s concept of the “antilibrary” where the unread books on our shelves remind us of all the knowledge that we don’t have and won’t acquire in this lifetime. If I could, I’d fill my house with books, read and unread. It would look like a library. It would elate and humble me. But I’m not the only person in my household who makes decisions about home decor, so there are limits to where books can be stored. This means that I needed to clear some space for the many new books that I’ve bought that have been stacking up on my desk—mostly philosophy books in preparation for a new class that I’m teaching next school year. Hence, the half-filled box that I’ll be taking to Half Price Books.

I chose mostly biblical studies and theology books. I didn’t touch my philosophy section. I didn’t touch my religious studies or American religion sections. I decided that only so many books on the Bible were needed, so that’s what I’m selling today. This decision reflects a change in my interest and even personhood over the past few years. I’ve struggled to teach students about the Bible in a way that confounds me. When I’ve taught courses on comparative religion, American religion, or even local religion (ala my summer offering “Religion in San Antonio”), it’s been easy to retain student interest and investment. And honestly, when I teach the Hebrew Bible, other than a lot of whining about “all the reading” (you signed up for a course on the Bible, kids!), it goes well. But every spring, the combination of the year drawing nearer and nearer to the end, along with self-understood “familiarity” (which is hardly any familiarity at all) that breeds contempt, and the fear of using critical thinking skills to evaluate something so sacrosanct as the Christian New Testament, I find myself struggling constantly with resistance to learning. Most of my educational training has been around the Bible, especially the New Testament. I’ve written ThM and doctoral theses on its content. I’ve presented papers at conferences about it. But nearly a decade of teaching it to adolescents has sucked the joy out of it. I enjoy teaching high school…just not the New Testament. And this has led me to lose interest in the very content matter that was at the heart of an undergraduate, two graduate, and one doctoral degree.

Is there another context where I could find myself enjoying the teaching and discussion of the Gospels or the Epistles of Paul again? Sure. I imagine an adult education class at a church, if I had the time or will power. But my experience in my context has so zapped me of interest in that material that I lobbied to reduce our two semesters of biblical studies to a single semester offering titled “Introduction to the Bible” which seems far more manageable for my students and me. I mean, to be fair, if students are going to learn about religion in high school—a privilege that many high school students don’t have or have only in contexts of indoctrination—I find it strange that they would spend all their time on the holy book(s) of Judaism and Christianity without even learning about Judaism and Christianity let alone all of the other religious traditions that are out there. Most of them aren’t going to seminary someday. If they stay Christian, as many of them are, they’ll hear the Bible through the comforting filter of sermons, which seems to be their preferred method of engagement anyway. (Sorry if this sounds bitter!)

This has led me to rethink other aspects of my personality and how I’m using my time. For example, do I want to remain a member of the Society of Biblical Literature? My son’s birthday will be every November, just a few days before Thanksgiving Break when the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion meet. Do I want to spend my time at those conferences anymore? I’m not sure. I don’t want to hear papers on some micro-exegetical evaluation of a portion of the Gospel of Mark, that’s for sure. So, is membership and conference attendance a waste of precious time and money? It’s beginning to seem like it.

I’ve been through these transitions before. So far, they’ve always turned out well but they’ve left me with a pedigree that doesn’t match who I’ve become. Let me explain. In high school, no one considered me college material. At best, I would go to the local community college for some skills but I think that most presumed that I would enter the workforce when I graduated. The summer before my junior year, I became curious about the Pentecostal tradition that my mother was raising me in, and by default, I became curious about how to read the Bible “the right way”. The positive side to this is that I turned around as a student and graduated from high school, which was in doubt at times, and then went to a denominationally affiliated college because I thought I was going to become a minister in those Pentecostal circles. By my junior year, I knew this wasn’t going to be the case. I didn’t believe any of their core teachings anymore, so I bid my time until I graduated, looking for a new place to belong.

The negative side of this is that my undergraduate degree is from a truly terrible school. I will never step foot on that campus again. But my options weren’t Stanford or Cal Berkeley as I neared graduation. My options were workforce/community college or this denominational school and the denomination school did give me the skills needed to get into graduate school. So, I went to Western Seminary, which is loosely affiliated with Baptist churches but mostly brands itself as conservative, “big tent” Evangelical (compared with say the more “liberal” “big tent” of a Fuller Theological Seminary). I earned a MA and then a ThM (Master of Theology) from there. As I began my studies for my PhD, through the University of Bristol but facilitated by the Anglican school Trinity College Bristol, I began to experience a from of deja vu. Just as I had known that I wasn’t going to be able to stay in the Pentecostal circles that had raised and educated me, because I could no longer identify with them, so my time in Evangelicalism was drawing to an end.

The end of my doctoral studies were traumatic. As I neared the completion of my thesis (what they call a dissertation in the UK), a series of things went wrong and I began the job that I’m still working today, which was great because I had a teaching job, but made it extremely difficult to finish off my thesis. For this reason, my viva was a bloodbath. I had to spend the next several months making corrections to my thesis in order to graduate and in order to not fail my doctoral program. I pulled it off but something had changed forever. As much as I’ve tried over the years to regain some sense of myself as a biblical scholar, the confidence was gone. I hated my thesis, so I never could find the will to edit it further to try for publication. It sits as a PDF on my computer and as a lost book somewhere in the library of the University of Bristol. (By the way, the external evaluator who bludgeoned me to death during my viva: his books, which I’ve kept on my shelves all these years, are in the box that I’m taking to sell this morning!)

All of this has me thinking about one of my favorite concepts from Buddhism: anatman/anatta. It’s a complicated theory, but as Daniel Weltman summarizes it: “there is no persisting self—nothing about us that remains the same at all times.” (I recommend his explainer, “The Buddhist Theory of No-Self”, for those who want to know more.) While I don’t know that I’m on board fully with the idea of no-self or no consistent self, it makes a lot of sense experientially. Is the Brian LePort that thought he was going to be a Pentecostal minister the same as the Brian LePort who thought he was going to be an Evangelical biblical scholar who became a high school religious studies teacher in an Episcopal school? Yes but also in many ways, absolutely not. Those versions of me were necessary for the current version of me to exist, for sure. If I wasn’t under the delusion at age 18 that I was going to be a Pentecostal preacher, I wouldn’t have the job that I enjoy now at age 42. But also, the decision of the 18 year old to go to a school that trains ministers in a highly sectarian denomination forever limited to future options of the person that I’ve become and am becoming. It’s still on my CV and I’m sure that along with schooling from conservative Evangelicals, it’s caused people to write me off as a candidate for many jobs. I got extremely lucky that when I applied for my current job a decade ago, that chaplain who was heading the search has himself spent time in Pentecostal and Evangelical circles, so he was curious about me. I fear that a born-and-bred Episcopalian who’ve never given me a chance!

On the other hand, there seems to be hardly anything left of that kid that thought he was going to be a Pentecostal minister. If I could warp time and meet him, we’d likely agree that there’s no connection between the two of us. We’d have a hard time imagining that we’re the same person in any meaningful sense.

I’ve written mostly about the changes that came from transitions in and out of religious traditions and academic settings but there’s no doubt that other major events forever altered me into someone new, ranging from my marriage at age 27, to moving away from California and eventually living in Texas, to the birth of my son last November, to a major health scare that I experienced just this January. These types of events feel like when the butterfly comes out of the cocoon. There’s continuation but the discontinuation is what’s radical.

Am I a philosopher now? No. I’m self-trained. I’ll always have a more developed skill set for biblical studies than for philosophy but the biblical studies books are going to the store to make room for more philosophy because who I want to be now is someone who thinks philosophically. I’m not as invested in the project of creating human knowledge around/about the Bible as I used to be. It’s a noble endeavor, as all humanities work is, but it’s not my endeavor anymore. And while I’ll continue to teach a class on the Bible for the foreseeable future, it’s not my area of interest anymore, so I hope my philosophy class is a success! Who knows who I’ll be or how I’ll feel in a year from now. I’m sure there will be far more continuation than discontinuation. I’m a relatively stable and static person. But sometimes you need to make room for a new version of yourself by getting rid of that which is old. So, if anyone is looking for a good deal on some biblical studies books, go to Half Priced Books over off Bandera Road here in San Antonio. You’ll find some of my stuff there.

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Simone Weil’s rootedness

The philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) is a fascinating character. (If you’re interested in hearing more, BBC Radio 4’s “In Our Time” did an episode on her: “Simone Weil”. So did Vox Media’s Sean Illing for his show “The Gray Area”: “Simone Weil’s radical philosophy”. I’m sure there are many more episodes out there not to mention articles!) Her book, The Need for Roots, is one that I’ve been reading through slowly. At some point, I want to write a few posts on what Weil considers to be the “vital needs of the human soul”. They’re sort of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but for our psycho-spiritual condition. But here I’m meditating on just one—the one that inspired the title of the book: our need for rootedness.

Simone Weil

I’ve been thinking about rootedness for about fifteen years without always having a word for it. This is because fifteen years ago, I left my home in Northern California. I planned to return as soon as I could. First, I went to Portland, Oregon, which was delightful in many ways. I think I could’ve settled there though the constant drizzle that helps make Portland so beautiful can also be quite depressing. When my wife and I had been there three years, we prepared to move back to California but the opportunity that I thought would take me back home disappeared, and we had mentally and emotionally committed to leaving Oregon, so we made the fateful decision to go to where my wife was born and raised: San Antonio, TX.

I felt out of place from day 1. I’ve been here twelve years now, and I’ll admit, I continue to feel out of place. I feel like a visitor. And while I don’t want to speak for my wife here, just so the rest of what I have to say doesn’t sound too whiney, I know she feels about Northern California just as I do. But I must say that hardly a day passes where my mind doesn’t flash an image of Napa, or Sonoma, or Marin, or somewhere along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, or San Francisco. I spent my first twenty-seven years there and while I know I had to venture out, sometimes I wonder if it was the right thing to do, especially as it seems more and more unlikely that I’ll have an opportunity to return.

For some readers, I know this sounds like it reeks of privilege, as I complain about not being in the hoity-toity Napa Valley of my youth. I’ll concede that. But it doesn’t make the feeling go away. When you see yourself as a plant who has been pulled from the soil in which you grew, only to be replanted where you feel like nothing is familiar, it doesn’t matter where the original soil is. And I think Weil gives me philosophical justification for this feeling.

This is what she wrote about rootedness (p. 33):

Rootedness is perhaps the most important and least known human spiritual need. It is one of the hardest to define. A human being is rooted through their real, active or natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive treasures of the past and has aspirations for the future. The participation is natural in that it stems automatically from place, birth, occupation and those around them. Every humans being needs to have multiple roots to derive all their moral, intellectual and spiritual life from the environment to which they naturally belong.”

For Weil, to belong to a people in a place is a good thing because you share with those people a commitment to that place, to keeping “alive treasures of the past and…aspirations for the future.” I admit, I’m more concerned with what happens in Northern California, whether it be politically, ecologically, etc., than I am South Texas. I’m invested in that place thriving whereas the place that I live feels distant. Yes, I work here. I vote here. But every time I see a billboard that says, “Don’t California My Texas!”, I know I don’t belong here. Whenever I see the legislative priorities of Texas politicians, I know that I have little place in keeping alive such treasures. I’m a long time visitor.

Weil says that this rootedness is “natural”. I feel this. When I get off the plane at San Francisco International Airport, the sun hits differently, the world feels and smells better. Again, it’s like a root returned to native soil: it feels right.

Now, in a sense, my workplace was become a place of rootedness. In fact, it’s the only reason I’m in Texas. I know that as much as work should not bear too much of our life’s meaningfulness, that if I worked a job that I did find meaningless, even in California, it would impact my emotional wellbeing. So, because I find value in my job, I haven’t been willing to risk that to go home. Whether or not this is reasonable, it’s why in twelve years from now I might be in Texas still, continuing to feel out of place but oddly fulfilled where it really matters.

Though, of course, I doubt myself when I think of what “really matters”. Now that I’m a father, I have this strong desire to offer my son what was offered to me. I’m not necessarily saying what my nuclear family had to offer me. That’s a complicated story. But what my rootedness had to offer me: drives through the vineyards of the Napa Valley, summer trips to Stinson Beach, the majesty of wandering through San Francisco, a game at Oracle Park, but also the culture and values of everything Northern California, save Silicon Valley which I despise. These things are me. I’m an extension of that environment. Will the day come when I say to myself, “Those realities matter more than my 9-5!” Maybe. The tug is always there.

When someone is unrooted, whether traumatically or not, it changes everything. Weil claims, “Every military conquest results in uprootedness.” This isn’t just because a people may be removed from their home but because their home is irreversibly altered into something different. For Weil, every “milieu” of rootedness “should receive external influences not as an addition, but as a stimulus that makes its own life more intense.” In other words, “external influences” can “nourish” a people but it shouldn’t alter what it is that they share. Because of this, it doesn’t take a military invasion. As she says, “…money and economic domination can be such a powerful foreign influence that it results in the disease of uprootedness.” My mind goes to what Silicon Valley did to San Francisco. In many ways, it’s financed San Francisco into becoming one of the most amazing cities in the world; in other ways, the San Francisco that I knew even in the 2000s, and all that it stood for, seems to have mostly disappeared. The Napa Valley where I was raised is almost completely unaffordable for the working class. I guess this is what makes gentrification so disheartening for those who experience it.

The changes that Mammon has wrought on Northern California create a tension when I think of what I want to offer my son. In Texas, I can afford a home for him to grow up in. I can model for him fulfillment in a meaningful vocation. But Texas is, well, Texas. A man like Greg Abbott is Governor. Men like Ted Cruz and John Cornyn are our Senators. Our politicians demonize immigrants. They make the lives of women more and more restrictive to the point where we’re one of the “top 5 worst states” for women. It’s not a safe state for the LGBTQIA+ community. I have no pride in Texas. There are good people here. There are good Texans. I hope they reshape the state into their image but it’s hard to feel committed to this cause because I don’t feel like I’m part of it nor can I ever really be. I’m just one of those dangerous people who might “California” their Texas.

Again, as I said, I might be here in twelve years, working the same job, feeling the same feelings. But Weil is right that having a sense of rootedness is a serious spiritual (however we may use that word) matter. I hope if I stay, it offers my son more opportunities so that I can justify the decision. I hope that I’m not being selfish in needing to work a job that I find meaningful. We humans are complex. Adulthood is just a series is decisions where we can’t know if we’re making the right one. This weighs on me. Will I regret sidelining the spiritual nourishment of rootedness, if I don’t prioritize it?

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Epictetus’ Stoicism (3)

See the second post here: “Epictetus’ Stoicism (2)”
See the first post here: “Epictetus’ Stoicism (1)”

On a somewhat recent visit to the local Phuoc Hue Buddhist Temple with some of my students, I heard Venerable Thích Quang Trí say something during his lesson that has stuck with me: in essence, if someone says something poorly about you, and it’s false, then it’s just that: it’s their false opinion of you. You are not responsible to change them. You can’t control them. So, you must let it go lest it controls you. (But if they say something negative that is true, then we need to learn from what is said and adjust.)

As I read Epictetus’ Encheiridion, I came across a similar comment that I want to share. It comes from Section 28 (Long, p. 43). He writes, “If somebody in the street were entrusted with your body, you would be furious, Yet you entrust your mind to anyone around who happens to insult you, and allow it to be troubled and confused. Aren’t you ashamed of that?”

There isn’t much commentary that I want to make; I only want to highlight the important connection. In both the sermon and this ancient text, we are reminded that words have control us. The words of other people, especially. If we let them dictate our thinking, especially when untrue, we’ve abandoned our independence. We’ve submitted ourselves to someone undeserving. We would fight if someone tried to do this to our bodies, so why do we give up the real estate of our minds so easily?

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Epictetus’ Stoicism (2)

See the first post here: “Epictetus’ Stoicism (1)”

Epictetus has a way of assessing what is valuable about our lives as humans that I find refreshing. In our society (I speak as an American), most people determine your greatness based on wealth and power. (Interestingly, many Americans also think of our society as a “Christian” one…but that’s another discussion altogether.) Rarely do we admire people for their virtues. Maybe we admire wealthy and powerful people who seem to have retain some virtue but our admiration of their virtue is secondary. We’re surprised that they have money, power, and character. But for Epictetus, as I wrote in the last post, there’s nothing about being wealthy that makes someone inherently great. If someone is wealthy, that’s just it: they have a lot of wealth. It tells us little about them as a human. The same is true of power.

Epictetus and Wealth
Now Epictetus doesn’t seem to be one who would say that we should “eat the rich”. He wasn’t anti-wealth. Nor is he anti-power. It’s just that he didn’t see these things as the be-all, end-all of human value like we are taught in capitalist societies. Epictetus saw wealth and power as things that someone might have, mostly by means that are beyond their control (e.g. born into a certain family; right place, right time opportunities). He didn’t deny that people who want wealth must pursue it, so there’s definitely some minimal contribution of human agency. But it is very minimal. Every wealthy and powerful person arrives where they do not because of the power of their will but because many things beyond their control went their way.

Here is what Epictetus appears to think of the decision to pursue wealth and power with our limited agency: it’s just an exchange. We’re making the decision to trade certain things for others. The trades aren’t necessarily “good” or “bad” but merely preferential. Let me share some excerpts that will explain what I mean (and remember, I’m using Long’s translation).

Judgments, Motivations, Desires, and Aversions
First, Epictetus warns us “if you desire any of the things that are not up to us, you are bound to be unfortunate” (Section 2; Long, p. 9). Epictetus has stated already that the things that are up to us are judgments, motivations, desires, and aversions. In other words, our perspective on the world is our own; how we exist in the world is mostly outside of our control. Wealth and power aren’t judgments, motivations, desires, and aversions but we can judge that we want wealth and power, be motivated to attain it, desire it, and be averse to experiences like poverty and powerlessness. But the only real choice that we’re making that’s in our control is the choice to value what we value. We could choose to value other things, like peace, tranquility, happiness, etc., which are more easily accessible as states of mind.

What We Value
Second, we must take responsibility for what we decide to value, knowing it could let us down if we fail to earn the wealth and power of which we dream. Epictetus says (Section 5; pp. 11, 13), “It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinion about things.” And “whenever we are frustrated, or troubled, or pained, let us never hold anyone responsible except for ourselves, meaning our own opinions.” With regard to what I’m saying here, if we pursue wealth and power and we fail, we have no one to blame for the fact that we invested so much of our emotion into those externals.

Entitled to Nothing
Third, we should see nothing of this sort as owed to us. We are not entitled to wealth or power, no matter who we are. Epictetus reminds us (Section 11, p. 19), “Never say about anything, “I have lost it’; but say, ‘I have returned it’.” If we have wealth and power at one moment, and then we lose it at the next, it was never “ours”. We had it on loan. (More intensely, Epictetus says this about the death of a loved one like a spouse or a child, for even with regard to people that precious to us, he stands by his assertion that we must remember that we can’t control whether they are with us or not. This has been a harder teaching for me to accept but I’m still processing why I’m open to Epictetus’ posture toward wealth and power while much more resistant to his posture toward lost loved ones. That being said, in his era, life-spans were shorter and one was more accustom to experiencing the death of a spouse or a child than we are, so it was something with which a first century CE Roman had to learn to cope.)

Distrust Yourself
Fourth, as I’ve discussed in another post (see “‘If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself'”), even if we pursue wealth and power, we should never allow ourselves to buy into our own hype. Epictetus writes in Section 13 (p. 21), “Even if some people think you are somebody, distrust yourself.” Oh that many of the world’s most wealthy, influential, and powerful people had an ounce of this self-awareness. Maybe to be a major player on the world stage like a Putin, or a Jinping, or a Trump, you have to have a level of narcissism that drives you to bulldoze forward no matter what but I don’t know that our world is better with such men in power. What if such men paused to have a moment of doubt as to whether they should be where they are, acting toward others as they do. Imagine.

Appearances Can Be Deceptive
Fifth, Epictetus reminds us that people who have wealth and power may not be as satisfied as they appear. He writes in Section 19 (p. 29):

“When you see someone honored ahead of you or holding great power or being highly esteemed in another way, be careful never to be carried away by the impression and judge the person to be happy. For if the essence of goodness consists in things that are up to us, there is room for neither envy nor jealousy, and you yourself will not want to be a praetor or a senator of a consul, but to be free. The only way to achieve this is by despising the things that are not up to us.”

A modern example that stands out to me is Elon Musk. The man spends hours on “X/Twitter”. There are days he tweets over a hundred times. He’s reported to have a burner account to fight online with his enemies. His cult of personality leads some to worship him thinking that “he’s playing chess while everyone else is player checkers” but what’s his goal. He’s the wealthiest man in the world and clearly, that doesn’t satisfy. He has to ear of powerful politicians, but that doesn’t satisfy. I’m skeptical that he’s a man who can be satisfied and by this I mean that he’s a man who could embrace happiness, peace, and tranquility. He needs drama. He needs a fight. Clearly, he needs to be constantly distracted. The billions aren’t enough. Epictetus would remind us that we should be very careful when we become jealous of such people. Do we want their lives, really? If your happy, at all, then you may want a piece of his financial security but I guarantee that if a genie offered you the chance to swap places with him, you’d turn down the offer.

Satisfaction Starts Inside
Sixth, this is because Epictetus believes that if you aren’t satisfied with yourself, there’s nothing wealth and power can provide you. In Section 23 (p. 33), he writes, “If you ever find yourself looking for outside approval in order to curry favor, you can be sure that you have lost your way.” And in Section 24, he says that we should not worry about living a life “without honor” in fear that we’ll be “a nobody everywhere”. Instead, we should embrace the reality that we “need to be somebody only in the things that are up to you, and in them you can be a top person” (p. 35). Personally, this means trying to be a good husband, father, and teacher. I don’t need to be somebody to many; I need to be much to a few.

Pursue Wealth, If You Can Preserve Honor, Integrity, and Moral Principles
Seventh, Epictetus addressed whether we should seek wealth (and we can add power) so that we can support others, like our friends. His response (in Section 24; pp. 35, 37)?

“If I can get it and preserve my honor and integrity and moral principles, show me the way, and I will get it. But if you are asking me to lose the good things that are mine just for your to acquire things that are not good, you can see how unfair you are and how ungenerous. Would you rather have money or a trustworthy and honorable friend?”

Similarly, Epictetus sees this commitment to honor, integrity, and moral principles as a patriotic act that benefits one’s nation: “And if you were to supply your country with another trustworthy and honorable citizen, would you not being doing it a benefit?” If we sacrifice our values, Epictetus warns (p. 39), “…if you lose this character in wanting to benefit your country, and you end up dishonorable and untrustworthy, what benefit would you be?”

Weigh the Costs
Finally, back to the most important point: all pursuits are exchanges. Epictetus advises (Section 29; p. 45):

“In every undertaking, examine its antecedents and their consequences, and only then proceed to the act itself. If you don’t do that, you will start enthusiastically, because you have not thought about any of the next stages; then, when difficulties appear, you will give up and be put to shame.”

He uses the example of somehow who wants to glory of being an Olympian. He doesn’t tell them that they can’t pursue this goal, but that they must count the cost of the exchange (p. 45):

“You must train, keep a strict diet, stay off pastries, submit to a regular regimen each day, summer or winter, drink no cold water and no wine except at appropriate times; in other words, you have to surrender yourself to the trainer just as you would the doctor. Then in the actual contest you have to dig in alongside the other contestants, and perhaps dislocate your hand or twist your ankle, swallow a lot sand, get flogged, and with all of this lose the fight”

Even if one is to commit to be a philosopher in the Stoic way, they must be prepared to lose some things in order to gain others; they must be prepared for certain hardships the lead to certain rewards. Life is about making decisions; it’s about exchanging this for that. “Think about all this then see whether you want to exchange it for calm, freedom, and tranquility” (p. 49).

In my next post, I’ll share some of Epictetus’ words about reputation and worrying about how others view us.

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Epictetus’ Stoicism (1)

Last week I read A.A. Long’s translation of Epictetus’ Encheiridion and excerpts from his Discourses, titled How to be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life. I know Stoicism is en vogue right now but there’s much of the philosophy that I find attractive, whether trendy or not. A while ago, I read a bunch of Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. The principles were agreeable to me. Likewise with Epictetus’ philosophy.

Epictetus (55-135 CE) was a Roman philosopher who had been a slave. His context is important because it’s different from those of us who have some way to participate in a democracy (though maybe not so different from people living in more authoritarian countries around the world, which could include the United States some day). As Long notes about Epictetus (p. xv), “The Roman world of his lifetime was an absolute autocracy, headed by the emperor or Caesar.” Epictetus didn’t have much hope for changing his world through campaigning, voting, or activism. As hard as it is to bring change about in our world, it was even harder in his. For this reason, the next best move was to turn inward to find freedom. According to Long (p. x), Stoics like Epictetus understood freedom to be “neither legal status nor opportunity to move around at liberty. It is a mental orientation of persons who are impervious to frustration or disappointment because their wants and decisions depend on themselves and involve nothing that they cannot deliver to themselves.” While many of us may have a more expansive experience of freedom (we can campaign, vote, participate in activism, start a business, etc.), the truth of the matter is that as individuals most of us are quite limited in our impact and our influence on the world, so the “inward turn” remains valuable because this is where our “locus of control” lies.

For Epictetus, there are aspects of our world that are “up to us” like our motivations, desires, and aversions: “in short, everything that is our own doing” (p. 3). Most things are “not up to us” like our “body and property, our reputation, and our official positions—in short, everything that is not our doing.” This can be a liberating insight, even now. We can’t control the body that we were born into, or the wealth with which we started, or how people think of us, or whether we get the job we want. Biology, and societies, and economies, and other systems control much of who we are and what we have. Even those who become billionaires need things to break a certain way and they need to do business in a certain system that is rewarding certain innovations at the right time. Jeff Bezos, for example, doesn’t happen in just any context, so the idea that he’s self-made ignores pretty much everything about reality. This is a freeing insight. Those of us raised with the myth of “the American Dream” were told that anybody can become anything if they work hard enough for long enough. It’s a cute myth but merely a myth. Like all myths, it inspires certain people who “make it” but they’re the exception that proves the rule: the American Dream is a lottery. There are plenty of people who worked hard enough for long enough for very little reward.

I’m going to write a handful of posts sharing nuggets of wisdom from the Encheiridion. For this post, let me end with this one, since I’ve been talking about being a “have” or a “have not”. In Section 44 (p. 79 in Long), Epictetus shares two “inferences” that are “invalid”:

  1. “I am richer than you, therefore I am better than you.”
  2. “I am more eloquent that you, therefore I am better than you.”

Epictetus reminds us that as humans, we are “neither property nor diction”. We have property/wealth. We have rhetorical skill. But those things aren’t what we are. Instead, if someone is richer than others, rather than seeing themselves as better because of this accident (I used this in both the philosophical and colloquial sense of the word), they should accept what it means: to be wealthier than someone else doesn’t mean that I am better than them; it means that my wealth is greater. That’s it. I have more wealth than they do and for most of us, someone has more wealth than we do.

We judge ourselves by accidents of reality. We determine our worth by things that we don’t determine, no matter how much we’d like to believe that our hard work and ingenuity is the sole cause of our wealth, success, health, etc. This isn’t to say that we don’t contribute anything. I mean, Bezos did have a great idea at the perfect time…but he easily could’ve made a mistake here or a mistake there and there’s no Amazon as we know it. Nothing about the lives of people that we deem “successful” is inherit and inevitable; the same is true of those who are deemed failures or even just middle of the road.

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A high-risk, high-reward society

A while back I was listening to The Herd featuring “American sports media personality” Colin Cowherd. Usually, he sticks to sports, providing his hot takes. But there was one day when he said something about American culture that struck me. I can’t remember the precise wording, or the context, but he praised the United States for being a place where if one “makes it” (in a capitalist sense), then one really makes it. We’re a high-risk, high-reward society. That means for the many who don’t make it, it’s natural to feel like a loser because our society exists as a competition that we welcome. America is held together in the same way that many professional sports organizations are: not so that all will succeed but so that the game itself can exist. Many poorer Americans perceive themselves as losers but rightfully so, admiring those who “succeed” (think of the adoration of Trump and Musk that we’ve seen from some circles), and sometimes hoping that they’ll get another shot to redeem themselves like we see in so many “rags-to-riches” Hollywood flicks. As many have said about Americans: we tend to think of ourselves as one big break from being millionaires when in reality most of us are one bad break from bankruptcy, especially if your health fails you. Most of us are far closer to being the person begging on the street corner than we are to being the next Jeff Bezos but our myths sustain us, so we ignore reality.

I think when many Americans despair the word “socialism” it’s because they agree with Cowherd: America’s greatness is—in the words of the Alicia Keys and Jay-Z song “Empire State of Mind”—the place where “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere“. Americans see themselves as playing on the biggest stage. Sure, the “World Happiness Report” ranked us 15th overall with nations like Finland, Denmark, and Iceland ranking at the top but I imagine it’s a small portion of Americans who would trade for the secure happiness provided by those countries’ social safety nets and the other perks that come with being a more collectivist society.

No Pleasure without Pain
In Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Joyous Science, Book 1, Section 12 (Hill translation), the philosopher provides a perspective that aligns with Cowherd’s and that of many Americans who see our country as “the greatest in the world” in spite of where we rank in measures like happiness, health, safety, etc. Nietzsche writes, “…suppose that pleasure and pain are so intertwined that whoever wants as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other (p. 45). In other words, to experience the highest highs, one must risk experiencing the lowest lows. When we think of celebrities in our country, they have fame like no humans before them but often their lives are very complicated: addictions, failed marriages, or in the case of our athletes, the physical toll.

Nietzsche understood Stoicism, which is having a revival in our time, as a philosophy that encouraged seeking “little pleasure” because this would lead to less pain. Likewise, he understood “socialists and party politicians” as opting for a life where risks are minimized in exchange for offering a lower ceiling of pleasure. He writes, “…should you want to mitigate and assuage human suffering…you must also moderate and diminish the human capacity for joy.”

Nietzsche v. Epictetus
This stands contrary to some of the Buddhist, Christian, and Stoic ideas that I’ve come to value, which emphasize human joy being found in minimizing suffering and being content with what one has. For example, this week I read Epictetus’ Encheiridion, and the emphasis from that ancient Roman philosopher (55-135 CE), who has once been a slave, is that true freedom is found in accepting what we might now call your “locus of control”. In Section 29, Epictetus tells his students that if they want to pursue the type of greatness that comes with say being an Olympian, then they should be aware of the cost. He doesn’t say that one shouldn’t pursue such goals; neither does he lionize doing so. Instead, one must be prepared to “exchange it for calm, freedom, and tranquility” (the “it” being the potential glories of achieving lofty goals). There’s something perplexing about human nature, especially as filtered through “the American Dream”: we know the path to peace but it bores us. Meaningfulness matters more than happiness. The philosophy of many Americans seems to be that they’d rather live somewhere where they can dream of greatness than somewhere they can be secure and at peace.

Are Ashramas the Answer?
I find that as I’ve aged, I’m attracted to Buddhist and Stoic ideas but I recognize that when I was younger, I would’ve aligned more with Nietzsche’s perspective. (I’ve found Christianity to be easily molded to fit both perspectives, depending on the emphasis place on different parts of that tradition.) There was a stage in my life where I was obsessed with completing a Ph.D. Once that stage was over, I lost my taste for living in a state of constant ambition. I think I was burned out. I wanted to take life much slower, catch my breath. It seemed like one stage of life required certain things to be satisfied while the next stage has required other things.

In Indian philosophy, there’s the concept of “ashramas” or life-stages. One begins with a preparatory stage where they develop discipline and become educated (“Brahmacharya”); then move to the family and wealth building stage (“Grihastha”); then they transition more toward voluntary service and spirituality (“Vanaprashta”); finally one ends with a preparation for death and hopefully deliverance from the cycle of rebirth (moksha from samsara) during the last stage of life (“Sannyasa”). Maybe this is a middle way? Maybe we need our days seeking glory and our days seeking respite and calm?

Now Cowherd, Trump, Musk, Keys, and Jay-Z aren’t examples of this path. They seem to be pursuing Grihastha to the day they die. But ashramas might serve as a way to reconcile some of the truths that seem to resonate in the contradictory words of Nietzsche and Epictetus, acknowledging, of course, that this presentation is structured upon a metaphysics that many outside of India don’t embrace. Maybe Nietzsche is right for young people: take those risks; pursue great pleasure. Maybe Epictetus, the Buddha, Jesus, and others are better voices for when one comes to realize that all that glitters is not gold, and that once one achieves, the satisfaction fades quickly. In the later, wiser years—for those who find it—peace, calm, freedom, tranquility, etc., should be the goal. It could be argued that one can’t really value the reward of a peaceful, calm, free, tranquil life without having first tried to find satisfaction in the pursuit of greatness. Personally, I needed to see if I had the ability to earn a doctorate. Others have an itch to start a business, earn a million dollars, travel around the world, etc. Sometimes we achieve what we want and it’s a Pyrrhic victory. We’re left wondering if all the effort was worth it. But the fact of the matter is that for many people, they’d be left with the same cloud hanging over them if they never tried to “reach their full potential”. I don’t know what this says about people in the late stages of life who need more money, more property, more power, more, more, more. My suggestion here doesn’t reflect well on them but hey, maybe Nietzsche’s right and our one short life is best lived with our foot on the pedal and the pedal to the metal until the day we close our eyes for the last time.

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Conference paper: Bible +

Earlier this year, I had two papers accepted for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. That same week I received the biggest news of my life: I was going to be a dad and my child would arrive around the time of the conference. So, I ended up withdrawing one paper and having another read for me in absentia. Here’s that paper:

Bible +: Why I Am Happy to Have Ended Up a High School Teacher!

Introduction

I have dreamed of being many things. When I was in high school, I imagined the day when I would be one the anchors on the evening SportsCenter on ESPN. In my college days, I thought I would become a Christian apologist. When I entered graduate school, I had matured: I would be a Pauline scholar! As a doctoral student, I shifted my focus again. Now I wanted to be a Gospels scholar who specialized in traditions related to John the Baptist. 

I became none of those things. Instead, I teach religious studies and philosophy at an Episcopal high school in San Antonio, Texas. If sixteen-year-old me could hear this, he would be mortified. But forty-two-year-old me is happy, actually. I enjoy what I do, almost every day. While I may trade my current position as “Social and Religious Studies Instructor” for that fantasy SportsCenter gig, I am quite convinced that I would not trade it for being a Pauline or Gospels scholar. In this paper, I will try to explain why this is and I will try to make my sales pitch to those of you who have a doctoral degree in biblical studies or are pursuing one. 

As you are aware, pretty much every media brand out there signifies that there is more being offered when they add a “+” sign to their name: Disney +; Hulu +; ESPN +. I am titling this paper “Bible +” because I think that for many people who attending the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (and/or the American Academy of Religion), they know how demanding modern higher education has become. They recognize that the “publish or perish” culture requires them to become increasingly myopic, diving deeper into one small segment of human knowledge until the well is as dry as they can make it. For some, this is a delight. For others, this is a nightmare: imagine all those other articles or books about other interesting topics that you will never read, or all those other articles and books about other interesting topics about which you will never write, or all those classes that you would like to design and teach but that you cannot design and teach because you must become the expert in the use of the kai conjunction in the Gospel of Luke! (Again, for some of you, that is the dream, and I have no desire to throw shade on that dream; I am appealing somewhat hyperbolically to those who feel that this is what they must become but who wish it was not!)

A Fox or a Hedgehog?

As I neared the end of my doctoral work, I was hired at TMI Episcopal in San Antonio, Texas. (Do not ask me to explain the acronym “TMI”. It takes a history lesson.) I was asked to teach biblical studies but also a “world religion” class. A couple of years into the job, I morphed the “world religion” class away from the “World Religion” model where you summarize the “big 5” or “big 7” religions, instead turning it into something of a theory of religion class called “Religion in Global Context”. In addition, I noticed that my students needed more religious literacy paired with their civics, so I created a class I called “Religion in the United States” that examines a wide array of topics from religious language in the founding documents and in the ideologies of the different Founding Fathers, to interpretations of the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, to new religious movements that originated in the United States, and much more. 

When I created these two classes, I was qualified to teach biblical studies, but I had to do a ton of work to prepare myself to teach about Hindu cosmology or Buddhist ritual or recent Supreme Court cases focusing on religious freedom claims. Admittedly, I do not think I would be prepared to teach on these topics in a college classroom, but I made myself ready to do so in a high school setting where the demand for specialization is a bit weaker. I do not know if the demands of my teaching context turned me into a fox rather than into the hedgehog that I imagined I would be, or if I was always a fox trying to live in the world of hedgehogs, but I am relieved to discover that I am happy being a fox.

What do I mean by being a fox rather than a hedgehog? I am sure that many of you are familiar with the saying of the Greek poet Archilochus who wrote: “a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing”. Isaiah Berlin took this short saying, and he turned it into a book about Leo Tolstoy titled, The Hedgehog and the Fox. This book popularized the idea that some of us like to learn a lot about a lot—the fox—and others of us like to learn a lot about a little—a hedgehog. When I dreamt of being a Pauline or Gospels scholar, I dreamt of being a hedgehog. Modern academia is designed for hedgehogs. But my job demanded that I become a fox, or recognize that I was a fox, depending on what you think about “personality types” and the fluidity or concreteness of our personalities.

I am convinced that there are more foxes at this annual meeting than are aware of it. There are more of us who want to connect the dots across wider plains of human knowledge. We may not be experts on a specific, local region but we can help people find their way down paths leading from one place to another.

Biblical Studies within Religious Studies

For example, in 2023, SBL’s membership stood at 6,844. The American Academy of Religion sits at about 10,000. I know that SBL covers more than the Bible and more than Judaism and Christianity but it seems that these numbers reflect the powerful hold of text based religious scholarship which in turn leads us to think of religion through the lens of sacred texts, their interpretations, their meanings, etc. But religions are so much more than their sacred texts. I will speak for myself when I say that my education was wildly disproportionate. I learned about the Christian Bible for years while having only a minimal understanding of the history of Christianity or global Christianity. This has to do with the Protestant identities of the institutions where I studied but my point stands: the Christian Bible is but one part of the ideological network that gives the Christian Bible meaning. The Christian Bible is but one part of Christianity. Christianity is but one part—though a very large part—of what it means to understand human religiosity. 

My appeal here is not to those who hear what I am saying and see no problem; my appeal is to those who have been asking themselves whether or not their own interest in teaching (primarily) but also reading, researching, and writing may be far broader than what biblical studies has to offer.

Religious Studies within the Humanities 

I have colleagues who completed degrees in biblical studies and religious studies who teach global history or Advanced Placed (AP) high school classes like “United States History”; who offer electives on topics like the Holocaust or race in America; who lead clubs like “Mock Trial Club” or run the school’s Model U.N. program. Personally, I have been shifting gears myself as I have recognized the need for a philosophy class where I teach, so I am doing the work to improve my own knowledge of philosophy in order to teach my students. I am thrilled to be doing this. I do not know what alternate universes look like for me. I may be thrilled to be teaching the Pauline Epistles in a seminary or the Gospels to an undergraduate audience, but I think I would be frustrated with the limitations that being a specialist like this puts on us. Again, for many, this is the dream, and I respect that. I am talking to those who think to themselves, “I wonder how my dissertation topic relates to that wildly disparate topic over there, and I wonder if there is a context where I would be allowed to build a very long bridge between the two?” If that is you, then teaching high school might be the answer!

At the Frontline of a Crisis for the Humanities

We know that the humanities are facing a crisis of legitimacy, of relevancy. We know this begins early when STEM subjects are promoted while the humanities are topics that many schools treat as necessary but not central. Can a poet earn a living wage?! We need more people who are willing to meet students earlier in their formative years, who can model for them the beauty of the humanities, including the study of the Bible and religion more broadly. If you were passionate enough to go for a Ph.D. in these topics, there is a chance that you are passionate enough to convince sometimes very hard to convince adolescents that what we study should matter to them. 

Also, on a more practical side: as higher education continues to shove more and more of us into adjunct-or-bust roles where you get minimal pay, often have to work at multiple institutions without many protections, and almost always are not offered health and dental benefits, or retirement, etc., let me ask you to consider teaching high school. You get to do much of what you dreamt of doing. I still teach about the Bible. I wrote my own curriculum. I get to teach and think and write about religion. But I also have benefits, and retirement, and depending on the state in which you live, you may even be able to afford a mortgage. The injustices of the adjuncting system are real and as difficult as teaching teenagers can be, I would not trade my experience. This will not be the case for everyone but once again, this paper is not for everyone, but it could be for you!

Conclusion

My career has become Bible +. Bible + comparative religion, theory of religion, sociology of religion, American religion, American history, religion and law, and now philosophy along with all the other pluses that I am not taking the time to name. My career is Bible + investing in emerging generations during the crisis point that is adolescence. My career is Bible + not being held captive by higher education’s refusal to take care of all of their teachers (which is not to say that there are not injustices against workers in the K-12 system but that, again, the bare minimum of a constant pay check, some job stability, benefits, and retirement is a lot better than what most adjuncting roles offer). I hope that someone out there will consider the possibility that a Bible + career may be the right fit for you as well! 

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The Santa Claus dilemma

Now that the holidays are upon us, and for the first time I’m a parent, I’ve been thinking about a dilemma. How do I approach the topic of Santa Claus with my son? I can think of three possibilities with pros and cons.

Option #1: embrace the Santa Claus mythology until he’s older and then inform him that it’s just a story that we have to outgrow

  • Pros: He gets to experience the joy of modern Christmas mythology. This will make the season a lot of fun. It’ll prevent him from being the strange kid who “doesn’t believe in Santa”. Hence, it has a function for social bonding. Like all mythologies, it’s one he’ll outgrow and this process helps young minds realize that there’s a difference between the stories we tell and facts about the world. There’s a time for this but childhood doesn’t seem to be it. For example, it seems like a parent would be a killjoy if they made a point to tell their kid that every Disney character they see in the movies “isn’t real”. It seems like bad parenting to say, “Now, I know you’re enjoying Frozen but I need you to understand that Anna and Elsa aren’t real!”

  • Cons: It feels like you’re lying to your kid when you tell them that Santa is real. And eventually, you have to break it to them that you’ve been misleading them. I’ve heard that when I was a child I was quite upset by this revelation at first until my mother told me that it wouldn’t change the number of gifts I received. Apparently, Santa became irrelevant, quickly!
AI generated image via Canva using the prompt “Santa confused about whether he exists”

Option #2: embrace the Santa Claus mythology until he’s older and then invite him to join us in “being Santa” for others

  • Pros: Some friends of mine had a slightly different approach. When their kids grew older, they told them that “Santa” is basically a collective. (Kind of like my theory of “Banksy”.) And that their parents and grandparents were part of this collective. And now that the kid is old enough, they are welcomed into this secret society of doing good for others around the holiday and giving gifts as “Santa”. Currently, I’m leaning this direction.

  • Cons: It has the same cons as the previous option. I think it makes a softer break between mythology and fact though. In some sense, it shows mythology can be true if we live it.

Option #3: reject the Santa Claus mythology because it could be understood as lying to my kid

  • Pros: We don’t lie to our kid. We don’t have to have that conversation some day about how Santa isn’t real. We emphasize logical and scientific thinking instead of the mythological and superstitious thinking that some people take with them even into adulthood (e.g. immature expressions of religion).

  • Cons: Our son becomes “that kid” who tells other kids that Santa isn’t real. It will change the meaning of the season for our kid. It will prevent them from enjoying a shared mythology. It introduces them very early to the sad reality that many of us experience when we grow up: the world isn’t as enchanting as it seemed. It pushes them toward “scientism” which rarely is emotionally or socially satisfying unless you’re reactionary or Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

My son isn’t old enough for this to matter for a couple of years. But that doesn’t mean that my wife and I shouldn’t be thinking ahead. What did readers of this blog who were parents do? Would you do anything different in retrospect? Is there an option that I’m not considering.

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The utmost importance of parenthood

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016, American dads spent about “triple the time” taking care of their children than they did fifty years ago (see “8 facts about American dads”): “Dads are much more involved in child care than they were 50 years ago. In 2016, fathers reported spending an average of eight hours a week on child care – about triple the time they provided in 1965.” In my view, this is moral progress. Fatherhood should be taken seriously. Fathers should invest heavily in their children. And I’m going to say something that sounds like a politically conservative talking-point but give me a chance to explain this assertion: once you become a father, it’s the most important vocation you can undertake. I think this is true of becoming a parent, in general. So yes, motherhood is the most important vocation you can undertake, once you become a mother.

Notice, unlike the Elon Musk’s of the world, I’m not advocating for having as many children as possible. Nor am I suggesting that becoming a parent is more important than, for example, choosing to pursue a demanding career or a religious vocation. Nor do I think there are absolutely concrete and universal ways to take parenting seriously. A single parent has particular demands that must be understood within that context. The same can be said of a parent struggling financially (which is why we should have strong safety nets for parents, if we’re the advanced and/or moral society we claim to be) or parents with particular health concerns (which is why we should have a robust health care system that doesn’t threaten people with unbearable financial burdens if they get sick—this includes “brain” or “mental” health). We might find it difficult to spend a lot of time with our children if these challenges face us.

But “all things being equal”, if you choose to become a parent, and you have the ability to spend time investing in your child’s health and well-being, then you must do this. It must be a priority. Here’s why I say this, and why my point isn’t the same as the one commonly heard on say Fox News. It comes down to consent. A child can’t consent to their coming into existence. As philosophers like David Benatar warn, when you have a child you put them as risk of the almost endless forms of suffering that could await them, from cancer to severe depression, to chronic pain or disabilities that aren’t accommodated by our society. Benatar takes this point so seriously, he argues that it’s immoral to have children, period. I disagree. When you have a child, you offer them all that is potentially good about existence. The moral thing to do is to try to build a world where all children have a better chance at experiencing all that is beautiful about being, from falling in love to eating tasty food to enjoying all forms of art to feeling a sense of accomplishment when we do something difficult. That said, I take Benatar’s argument seriously: you make the decision for them to exist. The gift of existence can become a curse, easily.

While I believe that all people are responsible for and obligated to other humans, I think the parent-child responsibility/obligation is the most demanding for this reason. I’m responsible for my students in a particular context but it’s not the same responsibility as that held by their parents. The responsibility of parenthood is the responsibility of direct causation. The responsibility of being an educator is the responsibility of interconnection or as some Buddhists call it, interbeing. As a parent, I impart existence itself where there might not have been existence. As an educator, I exist within a web of being wherein I have a particular connection to my students which comes with certain responsibilities and obligations, some which are immutable because I’m a sentient being living in a world with other sentient beings and my actions toward them impact all of us as a whole whereas other responsibilities are role-specific, like imparting knowledge and mentoring. If I quit teaching, or if they move on from being my student, then that latter responsibilities change. But if I see them in a store, or communicate with them via social media after they graduate, I remain responsible toward them as human to human, noting that I’m a human who was once their teacher. But I didn’t cause them.

My son that was born a couple of weeks ago, I caused his existence (in part) and therefore carry the burden of what kind of existence he might experience. This is immutable in the aforementioned sense of being a sentient being living in relation to him as a sentient being. If I cause him joy, then I have infused joy into our collective existence; if I cause him suffering, then I have infused suffering into our collective existence. More importantly, it’s immutable in the sense of my responsibility of consenting to his existence for him. This is analogous to being someone’s primary medical contact that makes decisions for them if they’re incapacitated without an advanced directive, except that it’s multitudes more demanding because as a parent you’re one of the primary agents in consenting on behalf of someone to the one thing that determines everything—their actual being in reality.

Now, as I said, I don’t know that we can lay down concrete, objective, universal examples of what it means to be a parent. There will be difficult decisions. Do I honor my decision to bring a child into the world by taking on that more demanding career that will drain my time and attention but provides me with the financial means to guarantee their health and well-being? Or do I honor my decision by doing my best to not live to work but to work to live, choosing a career that may pay less but provides me with more time for the emotional nourishing of my child? These are difficult decisions. The moral demand is for those decisions to be made with seriousness, recognizing the weightiness, and being willing to own those choices by saying, in honesty toward ourself, that we are doing what seems best for the person whose existence you determined for them.

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In defense of “tryhards”

This morning, I saw a post on Threads from user @matt_dean94 that said, “Anti-intellectualism is so ingrained in western culture that we have expressions like ‘know-it-all’, ‘smarty pants’, ‘geek’, ‘nerd’ etc. to insult the clever kids at school”. It reminded me of something I’ve heard in my classroom the past couple of years. Students have been using the insult “tryhard” to dismiss kids who put in effort. “Tryhard” is a pejorative that suggests that someone puts in too much effort or cares too much. Yes, it can be used for someone who is a “poser” (though I think there’s another discussion to be had as to whether being a poser is a bad thing) but often I’ve heard it used against students who just want to do well.

What’s the alternative to being a “tryhard”?
A few weeks ago, I addressed the use of “tryhard” when I heard it. I asked this question: What’s the alternative? Even if you’re “naturally” intelligent—whatever that may mean—to call another kid a “tryhard” is to admit that you intentionally underperform. What would be the rational for that other than fear of failing? It seems unlikely that there is one. When we don’t try on purpose, it’s so that when we do fail we can tell ourselves, “Well, of course I failed, because I didn’t try.” To try and to fail can be devastating to our pride. In other words, to be something other than a “tryhard” is a defence mechanism used by someone who is afraid to take a risk; to put themselves out there; to fail.

To call someone else a “tryhard” is to brag that whatever success one has as a non-tryhard is handed to them by parents, teachers, their school, their college counselors, etc. It’s to admit that we’re willing to be carried by others and then take credit for it later. It’s to say that we got lucky enough to be part of systems—familial, educational, etc.—that can guarantee our success. It would appear to me that while being called a “tryhard” is supposed to a criticism, to be a non-tryhard can’t be anything other than criticism. It’s like bragging about nepotism. (And yes, sadly, I recognize that we do live in a world where people brag about benefitting from nepotism.)

Gary Plummer, or someone
If my memory serves me correctly, when I was about 12 years old, I was watching the 49ers on TV and there was a player being interviewed. I think the player Gary Plummer whose last game was 1994. Again, I can’t claim that this is what I heard with precision but it’s an impression that’s stuck with me for decades that I’ve long attributed to Plummer. The player said something like, “Thank you to all the players who had so much more talent than I did but who didn’t put in the work.” In essence, the player was saying that he wasn’t the most naturally talented but that he was willing to outwork his peers. That willingness to put in the effort paid off and gave him opportunities he wouldn’t have had otherwise. That stuck with me and my mind has recalled it many times over the years. Plummer, or the player who I’m associating with Plummer, was a “tryhard” and it gave him a full NFL career.

Now, I don’t want to be heard as promoting “hustle culture” or being a work-a-holic. I don’t advocate for those mindsets. But there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do well. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to give one’s best. There’s nothing wrong with knowing you gave your all, put in full effort, and gave yourself a chance to fully experience something. For this reason, being a “tryhard” is a compliment, not a criticism.

Trying hard doesn’t guarantee success…but that’s not the point
Being a “tryhard” doesn’t guarantee success. Our world is full of ignorant and incompetent people who are in positions of authority or have become wealthy. (This is why Plato warned that if wise people don’t govern, they’re guaranteed to be ruled over by fools!) Life is too complicated for all the good things to go to those who put in the effort. This is why meritocracy can be such a misleading ideology that lets people down. (A great book on that topic is Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit.) But something I want my students to understand, and something I’ll teach my son (who was born about almost two weeks ago and is doing great!), is that all you can control is your integrity. All you can control is knowing that you gave your best and stayed true to your values; that you lived fully in every context and gave yourself the opportunity to discover what you may enjoy in life. Yes, it’s true that you may hate Algebra no matter how hard you try…but you could end up loving Algebra and you’ll miss every single one of these potential experiences when you preemptively decide to save face by refusing to become vulnerable enough to find out what you truly enjoy in life. Youth is when you have this opportunity. It fades with adulthood. So, be a “tryhard” while you can. You never know what a little effort will help you discover about yourself and the world.