Never Dream of Regretting

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake in the middle of the night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

T.H. White

T.H. White—and Merlyn—are right.  I can never dream of regretting gathering information, coming to fresh understandings, making connections I’ve never made before, learning something—anything—new. 

For many, many years, I longed for a deeper, wider education than the one I’d had. I saw myself standing before a locked cabinet filled with riches, riches of knowledge that would never be mine.  If it had been possible, I would have thrown that cabinet open and swallowed all it held in a single gulp! 

I didn’t want that knowledge to show it off.  I wanted simply to take it in, to make it part of my being.

I hold a bachelor’s degree in English and American literature, and I completed most of the work toward a master’s degree in the same.  I loved it all … fiction, poetry, essays.  Reading compelled me, drew me in, filled me up.  Nonetheless, the longer I lived in academia, the less satisfied I felt. 

My professors (all of them male in those days) were clearly reading for very different reasons than my own.  It is difficult, even now, for me to define what their reasons were.  To keep some kind of score?  To analyze, quantify, judge?  To set one piece of work against the other?  So little of what they were seeking seemed important to me.

I knew exactly why I was reading, but it was a reason I never dared voice in class.  I was reading to save my life.  I was reading to find God.  Or whatever might pass for God in the void of 20th Century existentialism.

(I have never forgotten a quote from a Saul Bellows novel that captured me.  “God isn’t sex,” a character says, “but …”   Just that.  Nothing more.  And that intriguing “but” has hung in my mind ever since.)

I wanted—oh, how fiercely I wanted!—to understand. 

When I left the university, I took a job teaching literature and composition to high school seniors.  I look back at that young teacher with a forbearing smile.  She was so preposterously serious!  And so determined that every bored, hormone-addled student in her classroom would discover in their reading exactly what she was looking for. 

And yet so much of what I had learned—so much of what I was required to teach—had little to do with what my heart sought. 

Once, years after I’d left the university, I heard a speaker who challenged my experience of the academic world.  I don’t remember his name, but he was the head of a new program at the University of Chicago.  Literature, history, philosophy, theology, all gathered into a single discipline for a degree in the humanities.  I’d never heard of such a program or such a degree, but I knew instantly that it had been created exclusively for me. 

It was all I could do to keep from following the fellow home.

If I had, though, I suppose I might have found the same kind of reductionism that had disillusioned me before.

My longing to know has diminished with time, of course, as every other longing has.  I am still aware of that locked cabinet, of how much it holds, but these days I contemplate its riches without envy.  Without even regret.  But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up the desire to know.  If anything, I’m more determined than ever to stretch, to discover, to understand.  To know, not what the world says I should, but what feeds me. 

I have spent much of my career exploring my own heart through stories.  Sometimes my fiction required background research … about wolves, about the Alaska Zoo, about American settlers on the prairie. Most of my stories, though, were drawn from what I could understand by looking inward.  It’s only in recent years that I turned to work that required me to gather very concrete information, often in fields entirely new to me.

I have explored the forces that brought our precious Earth into being, examined how our scientific understanding has evolved, learned how trees communicate with one another, discovered that, when a hive divides, the bees vote on their new location! I’ve studied the ways we are destroying all that sustains us.

And even with no new book to work on, I’m still exploring.  I’ve taken a fascinating tumble into quantum physics, despite having no background in science.  I don’t have that humanities degree, either, but I love exploring the ways different cultures find meaning.  Without a degree in theology, I am redefining the meaning of the word God. 

When I used to long to unlock that cabinet filled with all the knowledge of the world, I never once considered what would be lost had I been able to fling it open and take in its wisdom in that one great gulp.  I would have lost the day by day by day satisfaction of learning.  

That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.