COLUMN: Stretch yourself to grow
In the spring of 1970, I completed my undergraduate degree in philosophy and history at the University of Utah. Since I knew I was going to graduate school, I did not wait around to march with the others. I do not know even now who the speaker was. In March I set off across the country in a rattletrap car, heading for Boston. I had been accepted at Boston University, straight for a Ph.D. and at Harvard Divinity School for a master’s degree, after which I would have to apply for the Ph.D. program in what I wanted, philosophy and theology.
Like many mothers, mine did not want me to go. She was worried. The car wasn’t the best. I would be going alone. I could get into trouble or would be attacked. Like most 22-year-olds, I did not listen. My dad said, “You have to let him go and discover the world for himself.” I will always cherish his confidence in his children. After all, when no one thought it was worth it, he supported my brother to become the first person from our Utah high school to be accepted as a freshman at an Ivy League university.
Sure, the car broke down in Ohio and I had to have money wired to me to fix it. I picked up hitchhikers – it was the 1970s – and was nabbed in a real speed trap with a judge right on scene to cite me and ask for $20 to let me go. But I have never regretted the trip or the intellectual journey it represented. I got out of my comfort zone, away from the safe and the familiar.
For many, the safe and the familiar is all they know, and more will upset and disturb them. I understand this feeling. It was what my mother thought in 1970. For me and for others this was not enough. I needed, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, a wider world to grow in. The garden I grew up in was fine, but not for me.
I spent the spring and summer working in a factory and getting a union card, I guess becoming a semi-official member of the working class. I would have never done this in my hometown. In the fall when I enrolled in Harvard, I knew that was where I was meant to be. I studied with the greatest of teachers, who were at home in both philosophy and theology, became friends with protestants who are now teaching ethics at other schools and close friends with a Catholic roommate who has become an eminent patristic scholar in his own right. I felt an invigorating spirit with which I was right at home.
I do not know what I would have eventually done had I followed my mother’s longing. But I knew it wasn’t mine. I would have made the best of it, but it would have been a second best. My time at the University of Utah was broadening and I shall always regard it highly. But for me there was too much of home still in the atmosphere. I needed to grow in a completely different garden. I shall forever be grateful that I listened to my heart and to a pull from beyond myself.
College is a time when all students should get out of the circle that makes them comfortable and experience people and ideas that are not “just like them.” This will make you a stronger, more thoughtful person. Growing intellectually, spiritually and experientially is always better than standing still. New thoughts and people are liberating. Take courses that challenge where you are. Invest time and energy in activities that go beyond your circle of friends and influences.
In order to be sure that we are growing in a garden that will sustain us for life, we all need to see how we grow in other gardens. When I drove over the mountains in the spring of 1970 I knew that I was not coming back the way I left. But I also knew that I would be a stronger, more whole person wherever I would be. I was meant to cross those mountains. Ask yourself where your mountains are, that you need to cross, so that you can come back stronger and more of the person you are meant to be.
Richard Sherlock is a professor of philosophy