I had the honor (and burden, frankly) of passing on a minor honor my school hands out monthly to a colleague--a brother or sister in education, as I have come to call my co-workers--and I used the theme of "excellence in the familiar" as the conceit of the speech.
I'm also now grading AP essays about the value of exploring the unknown. Virtually all of the bright-eyed students are saying there is tremendous value in exploring the unknown.
I don't disagree, but it seems to me that there's another point here. There is value in celebrating the familiar.
My wife and I are best friends--no, that's not right. We transcended that a long time ago. We talk about facades or aspects of our character, our personae, and while I believe that these aspects are not false necessarily, the only person who knows the totality of those facets is my wife. And, as far as I know, she appreciates and is attracted to them. As I am to hers.
We are coming up on 30 years of marriage. Lots of people will celebrate and congratulate us on that when the moment comes in December of this year, and we will certainly do so ourselves. But what, exactly, are we celebrating? Just that we made it? We didn't divorce? Divorce is a choice some couples make, and while it's not mine, I can't condemn it universally. So what's the big deal about being and staying married?
To me, it's that I find the things about my wife--things I have known for decades--to be continually attractive, wonderful, amusing, and enthralling. The renewal of the familiar, I guess you'd call it. I celebrate that I know things--I realize people like to discover new stuff (perhaps that's one reason people get divorced) and I like that, too, but I also like to plumb the depths of something for a long, long time.
In other words, let's not confuse "exploring the unknown" with a sort of juvenile and facile attraction to "novelty." I have been guilty of that in my own life, so I speak not just from theoretical reasoning but from cold, harsh experience.
I love my wife BECAUSE she is familiar to me. She continues to excite me not because I find new things about her but because I look at what I already know and continue to be amazed by her. I'm attracted to the things I have always been attracted to in her. I'm not talking about mere comfort--though there is much to be said about comfort and stability--but by being startled anew each day by something that she does or something that she is.
A contradiction? Perhaps. But, as Francois de La Rochefoucauld said, "When we are in love we often doubt what we most believe."
I'd change that slightly, Frankie old man: "When we are in love, we often exalt that which is ordinary."
Be seeing you!
I'm also now grading AP essays about the value of exploring the unknown. Virtually all of the bright-eyed students are saying there is tremendous value in exploring the unknown.
I don't disagree, but it seems to me that there's another point here. There is value in celebrating the familiar.
My wife and I are best friends--no, that's not right. We transcended that a long time ago. We talk about facades or aspects of our character, our personae, and while I believe that these aspects are not false necessarily, the only person who knows the totality of those facets is my wife. And, as far as I know, she appreciates and is attracted to them. As I am to hers.
We are coming up on 30 years of marriage. Lots of people will celebrate and congratulate us on that when the moment comes in December of this year, and we will certainly do so ourselves. But what, exactly, are we celebrating? Just that we made it? We didn't divorce? Divorce is a choice some couples make, and while it's not mine, I can't condemn it universally. So what's the big deal about being and staying married?
To me, it's that I find the things about my wife--things I have known for decades--to be continually attractive, wonderful, amusing, and enthralling. The renewal of the familiar, I guess you'd call it. I celebrate that I know things--I realize people like to discover new stuff (perhaps that's one reason people get divorced) and I like that, too, but I also like to plumb the depths of something for a long, long time.
In other words, let's not confuse "exploring the unknown" with a sort of juvenile and facile attraction to "novelty." I have been guilty of that in my own life, so I speak not just from theoretical reasoning but from cold, harsh experience.
I love my wife BECAUSE she is familiar to me. She continues to excite me not because I find new things about her but because I look at what I already know and continue to be amazed by her. I'm attracted to the things I have always been attracted to in her. I'm not talking about mere comfort--though there is much to be said about comfort and stability--but by being startled anew each day by something that she does or something that she is.
A contradiction? Perhaps. But, as Francois de La Rochefoucauld said, "When we are in love we often doubt what we most believe."
I'd change that slightly, Frankie old man: "When we are in love, we often exalt that which is ordinary."
Be seeing you!
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