As a young professor, I listened to one of my older colleague’s complaints about his students’ levels of ability and accomplishment. He was himself a well-traveled bilingual man familiar with both Eastern and Western cultures in the context of a war and its aftermath. In giving his long, rambling lectures that his students had difficulty following, he seemed to rely mainly on his life experiences, rather than on his book-learning. That few college students could relate to his message born of experience seems natural, but of course, the rambling didn’t help. Every generation is similar in having to acquire experience before realizing what the previous generation wants to impart in a seemingly rambling presentation of details. Every generation runs a race the previous generation believes it has already completed, restudied in memory, and examined from the post-race perspective. The details overwhelm the inexperienced who look for a brief overview, a shortcut, a set of easy-to-follow steps to knowledge or success. Look, for example, at the length of this paragraph—troublesome rambling, eh?
Experience requires time and events, both of which are in short supply during youth. Yet, wanting both, many young people take up causes, often enthusiastically. The inexperienced, however, often “apply” before they “know,” and ironically, they do so with confidence. “It’s so evident. Why haven’t the old people done this?”
Regardless of the opinions of the pessimistic elderly like my now deceased colleague, the young are often willing to put in an energetic effort for a cause. The young see races to be run, goals to be reached, challenges to make an ideal world. “Why haven’t the old people done this?”
But in running toward the goals they believe they can reach, many ignore the contexts of contemporary competitors who are running different races. We ponder in our haste, “Why aren’t they all on the same track we run? And why are those old people just sitting in the stands scratching their heads?”
Enthusiasm for a cause is often the point of departure for two generations. Some members of an older generation, having already run with the wind in their faces, see that certain races are rather futile and certain goals not worth the efforts they made in reaching them. Or, having reached the finish line they chose to reach in their youth, they see that others have raced to different ends on tracks they never knew. Someone sprints a 100-meter dash; another runs a Marathon. One can win against competitors in only one race at a time, and time, for humans, is finite. Zeno was wrong in part: We can reach a finite goal, but we don’t all run toward and reach the same goals, and we don’t run with equal pace or enthusiasm. He was right in part: Those ideal goals are unreachable because their finish lines are in the details of their tracks an infinite number of fractions distant from the runner.
In youth, we are optimistic about reaching ideal goals. Experienced runners might attempt to convey the details of difficulty, but we don’t see the logic in their “ramblings.” Is it our impatience derived from inexperience that makes us incapable of following their lessons?
Knowing where failure is probably inevitable, the experienced attempt to convey their knowledge. The inexperienced take such warnings as ramblings of the elderly who cannot understand their passion. In the cause of cause, every generation trains hard and runs hard toward a goal as long as the goal seems worthy of the attempt. Advice from the elderly in the form of details seems little more than pessimism from rambling minds filled with irrelevance. No one wants to hear from an apparent Scrooge, “Bah! Humbug,” with regard to a goal. As Ida M. Tarbell once wrote, “The pain and struggle of an enterprise are not what takes the heart out of a soldier; it is telling him his cause is mean, his fight is vain. Show him a reason, and he dies exultant.”* When the young believe they see a finish line, they race toward it, and they don’t want someone telling them in rambling details that their goal is unreachable.
So, in our youth we race toward a goal that we simply believe others could not reach because they had not the necessary energy or perseverance. But that lack of experience is often what trips us in the middle of the race, and that same lack applies to those who wish to improve the world by imposing their method of running and their strategies on others. Yes, some will run with us, but others choose to race different distances at different paces on different tracks. In youth, we often fail to understand why others choose to run as they do. Is wisdom a mix of understanding not only that humans have limitations, but also of understanding that ideals, though possibly worth our striving, have endemic unreachable finish lines persistent through generations. If in our youth we could only understand the ramblings of the old, we might focus our energy on races we could win.
Not so in our youth. Praise our naïve enthusiasm for challenges. Praise that ability to expend great energy before we get bogged down on a muddy track of details.
In attempting to recruit others to race toward the same finish line, many of us make in our inexperience the same mistake that Ida Tarbell says others make when they want to change the world: “He wins, but he loses, by this method. He makes converts of those of his own kind, those who like him have rare powers for indignation and sacrifice, but little capacity or liking for the exact truth or for self-restraint. He turns from him many who are as zealous as he to change conditions, but who demand that they be painted as they are and that justice be rendered both to those who have fought against them in the past and to those who are in different ways doing so today.”**
We will never settle on the importance of a single race, and we will never be able to convey the details of experience to novice runners. They might understand part, but never the whole, of explanation. Too many details. Only running and living can enhance understanding on a par with those who are more experienced.
See a life of details in the old. See a life of generalizations in the young. See one group worn down by the details of the races they have run. See the other group expend their energy. See the former having realized that they chose certain races among many they could have run; the latter still in the process of choosing but believing that the race they will choose to run is the only race worth running.
*Tarbell, Ida M. The Business of Being a Woman, New York. The MacMillan Company, 1921. Online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16577/16577-h/16577-h.htm
Last chapter: “On the Ennobling of the Woman’s Business,” 216 ff. Paragraph 7.
**Ibid., Paragraph 3.
Experience requires time and events, both of which are in short supply during youth. Yet, wanting both, many young people take up causes, often enthusiastically. The inexperienced, however, often “apply” before they “know,” and ironically, they do so with confidence. “It’s so evident. Why haven’t the old people done this?”
Regardless of the opinions of the pessimistic elderly like my now deceased colleague, the young are often willing to put in an energetic effort for a cause. The young see races to be run, goals to be reached, challenges to make an ideal world. “Why haven’t the old people done this?”
But in running toward the goals they believe they can reach, many ignore the contexts of contemporary competitors who are running different races. We ponder in our haste, “Why aren’t they all on the same track we run? And why are those old people just sitting in the stands scratching their heads?”
Enthusiasm for a cause is often the point of departure for two generations. Some members of an older generation, having already run with the wind in their faces, see that certain races are rather futile and certain goals not worth the efforts they made in reaching them. Or, having reached the finish line they chose to reach in their youth, they see that others have raced to different ends on tracks they never knew. Someone sprints a 100-meter dash; another runs a Marathon. One can win against competitors in only one race at a time, and time, for humans, is finite. Zeno was wrong in part: We can reach a finite goal, but we don’t all run toward and reach the same goals, and we don’t run with equal pace or enthusiasm. He was right in part: Those ideal goals are unreachable because their finish lines are in the details of their tracks an infinite number of fractions distant from the runner.
In youth, we are optimistic about reaching ideal goals. Experienced runners might attempt to convey the details of difficulty, but we don’t see the logic in their “ramblings.” Is it our impatience derived from inexperience that makes us incapable of following their lessons?
Knowing where failure is probably inevitable, the experienced attempt to convey their knowledge. The inexperienced take such warnings as ramblings of the elderly who cannot understand their passion. In the cause of cause, every generation trains hard and runs hard toward a goal as long as the goal seems worthy of the attempt. Advice from the elderly in the form of details seems little more than pessimism from rambling minds filled with irrelevance. No one wants to hear from an apparent Scrooge, “Bah! Humbug,” with regard to a goal. As Ida M. Tarbell once wrote, “The pain and struggle of an enterprise are not what takes the heart out of a soldier; it is telling him his cause is mean, his fight is vain. Show him a reason, and he dies exultant.”* When the young believe they see a finish line, they race toward it, and they don’t want someone telling them in rambling details that their goal is unreachable.
So, in our youth we race toward a goal that we simply believe others could not reach because they had not the necessary energy or perseverance. But that lack of experience is often what trips us in the middle of the race, and that same lack applies to those who wish to improve the world by imposing their method of running and their strategies on others. Yes, some will run with us, but others choose to race different distances at different paces on different tracks. In youth, we often fail to understand why others choose to run as they do. Is wisdom a mix of understanding not only that humans have limitations, but also of understanding that ideals, though possibly worth our striving, have endemic unreachable finish lines persistent through generations. If in our youth we could only understand the ramblings of the old, we might focus our energy on races we could win.
Not so in our youth. Praise our naïve enthusiasm for challenges. Praise that ability to expend great energy before we get bogged down on a muddy track of details.
In attempting to recruit others to race toward the same finish line, many of us make in our inexperience the same mistake that Ida Tarbell says others make when they want to change the world: “He wins, but he loses, by this method. He makes converts of those of his own kind, those who like him have rare powers for indignation and sacrifice, but little capacity or liking for the exact truth or for self-restraint. He turns from him many who are as zealous as he to change conditions, but who demand that they be painted as they are and that justice be rendered both to those who have fought against them in the past and to those who are in different ways doing so today.”**
We will never settle on the importance of a single race, and we will never be able to convey the details of experience to novice runners. They might understand part, but never the whole, of explanation. Too many details. Only running and living can enhance understanding on a par with those who are more experienced.
See a life of details in the old. See a life of generalizations in the young. See one group worn down by the details of the races they have run. See the other group expend their energy. See the former having realized that they chose certain races among many they could have run; the latter still in the process of choosing but believing that the race they will choose to run is the only race worth running.
*Tarbell, Ida M. The Business of Being a Woman, New York. The MacMillan Company, 1921. Online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16577/16577-h/16577-h.htm
Last chapter: “On the Ennobling of the Woman’s Business,” 216 ff. Paragraph 7.
**Ibid., Paragraph 3.
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