-- By Tom Phillips
Many years ago, when
I was 17, I remember telling my girlfriend in a panicked tone – I’ve
gotta figure out something I can be great at – the world’s best. It was beginning to sink in that my pro
basketball dreams were going nowhere, and I needed a substitute. What could it be? Acting?
No, she said, not acting.
A few years later
I took my confusion to a favorite professor, who must have been feeling cynical that day. What can I be, I
pleaded. His advice was to become the
world’s leading expert in a field not many people were interested in – Spanish
cookery, for example. I scoffed at
that. Soon, I set out for San
Francisco , where I hoped to launch my career as an idolized
folk-singer.
Fast-forward thirty years or so to middle age, when a colleague of mine, a celebrated TV journalist,
asked me what I was doing with myself. I described my modest position as a
newswriter, and he looked at me in alarm.
“That’s a wasted life!” he said.
Wounded, I rallied. Wait a minute – That’s not all I do. I play music, I teach, I’m a minister’s
spouse, a father of many. He quickly
apologized, but I could see where his values lay. He felt that anyone with any talent should
use it to the utmost – and not let other, lesser goals stand in his way. This fellow had dropped out of college to
pursue journalism, his health was awful and his personal life was an unholy mess. But he loved his work, and he was very famous,
and rich.
I think of these
exchanges because recently a 16-year-old granddaughter of mine repeated,
almost verbatim, my teenage panic speech:
I have to find something I’m great at! Volunteering in a hospital had soured her on the medical field, so
she needed a substitute. What could it
be? Acting?
The world is
awash in bad advice these days, and has been for some time -- maybe since the
dawn of the industrial revolution, when the one-trick pony entered the ring, and
people began to hear that they should decide early what they want to “be,” and
narrow their focus. The new role models
were industrial tycoons, or scientists in search of a cure, or mad artists, or
fabulously wealthy financiers. Today we
admire relentless entrepreneurs like Mark Zukerberg, pasty zillionaires like
Warren Buffett, super-athletes like Tom Brady and Tiger Woods, and actors and
rock stars who barely went to high school.
They’re all great at something.
It was not always thus. Back
in ancient times, the goal of education was “mens sana
in corpore sano” -- a sound mind in a sound body -- and learning was physical as
well as mental. And the ideal was not greatness
or “expertise” in one subject, but a broad competency – the ability to
recognize the soundness of an idea in almost any field of knowledge. Up until modern times an educated person was
able to move between fields of endeavor – applying knowledge of the arts and
sciences to create, to invent, to do battle, to think and act across the whole
range of human activity. Such
“renaissance men” are rare today, but they still exist.
A few people I
admire, because they can do more than one thing well:
Cincinnatus: A Roman soldier and statesman whose main vocation was
agriculture. When the Romans needed a military ruler to save them, they would call for Cincinnatus, and after his victory,
he would return to the farm. “Cincinnatus
at the plow,” means someone who serves his nation without making a career out
of it.
Bill
Bradley: A world-class athlete and a
distinguished politician. An
all-American basketball player at Princeton , he delayed
turning pro and went to Oxford as a
Rhodes Scholar. Then he returned and won
an NBA championship with the New York Knicks.
He went on to serve three terms as U-S Senator from New
Jersey , and ran for President in 2000.
Noam Chomsky:
A philosopher who revolutionized the theory of linguistics, and a
radical critic of U-S foreign policy.
He came to Columbia University
Elizabeth
Warren: Women haven’t had the
opportunity to become renaissance men until recently. Warren
may show the way – a law professor who became a consumer advocate, now a U-S
Senator from Massachusetts , maybe
our first woman president.
And here’s one
to shock you:
Ronald Reagan: Sports announcer, movie actor, union leader,
conservative spokesman, Governor of California, President of the United
States . I didn’t agree
with Reagan’s ideas either, but I admired his ability to use his skills and
knowledge across a range of fields. In
his Hollywood years he was President of the Screen
Actors Guild. When he turned to national
politics, the key to his success was the classical art of rhetoric, of which he
was a master. Addressing the
nation on TV, Reagan would read his lines rapidly and clearly. His voice was deep and sure, his pronunciation
perfect, his emphasis right in every sentence.
His emotions were always evident, but always in check, under
control. Even if you disagreed,
something in you was convinced by this fellow.
Contrast that
with the presidents of this century, who can barely talk. Obama is hailed as a good speaker, but this
only shows how far the art of rhetoric has fallen. He whines, and reads a script in a stilted
manner, distorting the articles “the” and “a” into THEE and AYY. And
let’s not even mention George W. Bush. These guys know nothing but politics, they
don’t bring anything to the table from anywhere else.
It’s a
benighted age, kids. But you Millennials
can turn it around. Don’t narrow your
focus, broaden it. Shun the experts and their specialties, and learn to distinguish sense from nonsense across a
wide range of fields. With a sound mind
in a sound body, and sound judgment rooted in critical thinking, you can stand
up to all kinds of experts – doctors, lawyers, economists, politicians – hold
your own, and more. You’ll actually have
an advantage over the experts, who can only think in their own terms, inside
their own box. And you can have not one
profession, but several.
What’s more,
life doesn’t have to center on work – your personal life is more important. That's where your learning and your values really count, in your personal
relationships. To me, being a good husband, father, grandfather, teacher, means having something of value to give. It’s love, of course. But it’s also knowledge – the kind of
knowledge that’s not just useful in some specialized field, but across all of
life. And you don’t get that by
“narrowing your focus.”
Copyright 2015 by Tom Phillips
“In the
beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are
few.”
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