Dear non-existent readers, I apologize for the extended hiatus in blogging, even as my blog is a fledgling. I guess my engine died before my plane took off.
I have decided to add a 4th point to my blogs: 4) My "answer," or working hypothesis to the question I raise. It is insane to be in front of life without a hypothesis. Please offer corrections or scathing castigations of my hypothesises.
So, here goes nothing (for that is what this blog sometimes seems).
1) Before this semester, I have never before had to worry about motivation for studying, for two reasons. Number 1 is that I always fought personal demons of perfectionism. If someone took a poll of my subconscious in high school, it would be unanimous victory for "be all you can be" or "actualize all your potential" or something similar. I wasn't motivated by competition with others, but rather a sort of internal conviction that hell, I could get straight As, so why settle for less? Number 2 is that I have always been interested in everything I have studied, more or less. I think the only subject that I really found completely boring was Economics.
But nowadays things are changing. For the first time in my life, it seems heroically worthless to finish homework. I cannot stick to my schedules, and work is actually work. Not that classes weren't hard before-- now I just lack the motivation.
2) Something is obviously wrong. My heart rebels against the slothy indifference that follows in wake of disillusionment with study.
It is a problem of interest. I am unable to study something uninteresting. Ostensibly I say that everything is interesting, but my heart and my actions tell otherwise. Too little moves me in reality. Even when I know my purpose for studying, my why, this why is useless motivation-wise if it lacks any existential correspondence to desire. I cannot study because I do not know what moves me.
3) The relavent questions then are these:
What real desires do I have that possibly correspond to study?
What purpose for study corresponds to my real desire?
In other words, how does studying make me happy?
How can I remind myself of the answers to the above on a daily basis, so that life is not reduced to anticipation of future happiness?
4) Since I am still in school, I must muster a response, a working hypothesis.
I think that any of the deepest, most original desires of my heart have the potential to correspond to my study. The hard part is avoiding theoretical abstractions of my desire to focus on experientially verified desires (real ones). Here are some: my desire to love, for love, for happiness, for honesty, for the extraordinary, for freedom, for a full and true life.
It seems that one purpose for study could be to clarify these original desires. This works with humanistic studies that show "what it means to be human," or what it means to be myself. Then the purpose becomes a sort of searching for what truly fulfills these desires. From my own life thusfar, it seems that only an Infinite Answer fulfills these infinite desires, but the Answer must be incarnate and real in my life, which seems complicated, though not impossible. Furthermore, the Answer must meet me, because I don't know what the hell I am doing, basically. I am still learning how the Answer meets me concretely in my life, but I suspect it has to do with community. For in a community based on God (might as well name Him), I can hopefully love, be loved, be happy, be honest with others/myself, experience the extradordinary, be free, and truly live. If I have already discovered by being educated that the Answer resides in a community based on God, then why do I still study? Perhaps to perfect my knowledge of how I can pursue the fulfillment of these desires. For example, further study can help me know how to love others better, or it can develop my understanding of what it means to be honest or to be free (or how to be honest or free). I study to be able to better serve the community, where the Answer to my desires is. If my desires are ever realized, then I suppose it would be time to stop studying and start teaching.
Studying makes me happy by articulating the core of my humanness with all its desire, disposing me to the Answer that must meet me concretely, probably through a community based on God. Studying furthers my happiness by perfecting my service to this community (or to a larger community) and my understanding of how I can best live my life so as to be happy.
The last question is the toughest, because it pressupposes all the others and because it is intimately tied up in motivation, which demands tangible motivation each day. How do I know every day that studying can make me happy? I must go to the source--my person and my desire. I must continually remind myself of who I am by doing real things, having real experiences that provoke my desire and paint a portait of my identity. I only know who I am by watching myself in action, and if I don't act who am I? Learning must start with experience because experience engages my "I," my person with all its desires. So I can only stay motivated if I embrace every moment of life with a vivacious search for every nook and cranny of my humanness.
Note: I have not adressed the whole study for job criterion because I think it inadequate. If someone wants to make a case for it, please do. I could probably buy some of it if it invovled something about providing for a family...
About Me
- Patt-man
- >Email: pjohns13@nd.edu >Skype: godlover31 ->Cell: 309-256-2723 >Mailing address: 307 W Ivy Ln Peoria IL 61614
7 comments:
Interesting blog, a good read, and very pertinent to the experience of the modern university student. You speak of "real experiences" as a factor of your motivation, a method of refocusing on yourself in order to find happiness, and I agree very much with that. In study is it not possible to have another type of experience, but in the abstract? True it lacks the perception of others for their verification of its worth, but shouldn't we find at least some happiness in any experience? After all, it is our experiences, regardless if they are apparent or not to others, that shape our identities and make us realize our sense of "self". I can say that this is what motivates me to study, a longing for experience within myself, to complement my real experience. Again, good post, I'm glad I stumbled across this.
Ted, thanks for your input. I think you are right to add that it is possible to have and important to expect experience and happiness in study itself, or as you put it, "within myself." In my own experience, the perception and presence of others adds much needed verification and energy and realness to my experience and judgements about it.
Abstraction does not make me happy. But fundamentally, it seems to me that everything I can experience should be real in some sense--behind books there are authors, for example; and behind conceptions of things there is some Reality they approximate. And unless I'm way off, it doesn't seem like you think them really abstractions, since you call them "experience in the abstract" and "experience within myself." So I think I buy your argument, with slightly different words (abstractions).
I would add that discovering the longings and desires themselves are experiences within myself.
Thanks again for your input, and please post back if I have compromised your position or if you have changed your mind. Come back anytime.
to get job
Interesting reflection...for some reason it kind of reminded me of Aristotle crossed with Plato. Anyway, I was curious why you decided to leave out the practical aspect of getting a job. Is it because you don't really value money? Because you think you could make an adequate living without a college education? I'm interested because I think about these things a good deal, too. I tell myself that I don't care about money, as long as I can provide for my basic needs, but I've never really had to go without things, so I can't say for sure. I think that I could be happy at any economic level (again, as long as my basic needs are met). But at the same time, I don't really want to work at Burger King for the rest of my life...
Hey Joey, thanks for posting. I think the whole studying to get a job criterion is unsatisfactory chiefly because it places the motivation so far in the future. The problem with placing motivation in the future is that is makes the present unbearable. How do I get interested in studying when I can only think of studying as a prison term before my job? Even back when I had a vision (with no reality) of becoming a humanitarian doctor, I wasn't interested enough to teach myself Biology every day.
That being said, you raise relevant questions about concern for future standard of living. While I am cheap (because I have too much stuff and I have residual habits from trying to relieve family stress), I place little to no value on money. Some saint said, "money is the shit of the devil." I also have faith in God and Divine Providence, thinking that He takes care of all of my needs. I think that if I try to love God in my life, I might be poor, but I won't lack for necessities.
I think the kind of college education we are receiving in PLS will help prepare me to embrace an situation (or "economic level"), even entering into the poorest of conditions (where I have worked in the summer), for I will be able to find meaning there (aka find God there).
ummm huh?
-Tiny Tim77
O ya, almsot forgot, to all of pat's friends I am Timmy, Pat's brother.
-Tiny Tim77 / Timmy
Post a Comment