the fool of fools

You know, you're always putting your foot in it, you fool. Writing or saying something when you know silence would be better. Shouldn't an education be about what to say and what not to say? To know when to say the right thing? Gawain! Hearts and minds, said the great natural philosopher.

There it is, the white page in front of you, and you can't resist! The seduction of emptiness. The lack of reserve(s). Ach, no fool like an old fool.

"What I did hate, though, and what finally sent me at a run out of town after dark at the end of the term, without saying goodbye or even turning in my grades, was that with the exception of Selma, the place was all anti-mystery types right to the core--men and women both--all expert in the arts of explaining, explicating and dissecting, and by these means promoting permanence. For me that made for the worst kind of despairs, and finally I couldn't stand their grinning, hopeful teacher faces. Teachers, let me tell you, are born deceivers of the lowest sort, since what they want from life is impossible--time-freed, existential youth forever. It commits them to terrible deceptions and departures from the truth. And literature, being lasting, is their ticket.

Everything about the place was meant to be lasting-life no less than the bricks in the library and books of literature, especially when seen through the keyhole of their incumbent themes: eternal returns, the domination of man by the machine, the continuing saga of choosing middling life over zesty death, and on and on to a wormy stupor. Real mystery-the very reason to read (and certainly write) a book-was to them a thing to dismantle, distill and mine out into rubble they could tyrannize into sorry but more permanent explanations; monuments to themselves in other words. In my view all teachers should be required to stop teaching at age thirty-two and not allowed to resume until they're sixty-five, so that they can live their lives, not teach them away--live lives full of ambiguity and transience and regret and wonder, be asked to explain nothing in public until very near the end when they can't do anything else.

What’s true, of course, is that they were doing exactly what I was doing-keeping regret at arm’s length, which is wise if you understand it exactly. But they had all decided they really didn’t have to regret anything again! Or be responsible to anything that wasn’t absolutely permanent and consoling. A blameless life. Which is not wise at all, since the very best you can do is try and keep the regret you can’t avoid from ruining your life until you can get a start on whatever’s coming.

Consequently, when these same people are suddenly faced with a real ambiguity or a real regret, say something as simple as telling a sensitive young colleague they probably like and have had dinner with a hundred times, to go and seek employment elsewhere they couldn’t be more bungling."

---Richard Ford.