I love my job. I use my years as a university instructor of research methodology, literature, academic writing, philosophy, and critical thinking to manage a writing and learning center at a community college in a very cool part of San Antonio, Texas.
Our center is blessed to have four incredibly dedicated and talented tutors, all of whom have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English or a related field. It’s easy to manage people who are bright and resourceful. Actually, I’m supposed to show them how to do things and to act as a mentor, but I find myself—on a daily basis really—learning things from them and feeling mentored myself.
One of our tutors is a guy named Michael. He recently graduated from the University of North Texas with a kind of interdisciplinary degree and calls himself an expert in Tejano music, especially the part it plays in Mexican-American culture. I really like him for a number reason. For one, he is very much an intellectual and wants, eventually, to get his PhD and become a professor. He’s also he’s very passionate about politics, and anyone who’s read any of my blogs understands that this makes us brothers in arms. (He has said, on more than one occasion, that he has friends who are quite active in a variety of anti-fascist organizations.) I have not pushed him for details on what his friends actually do and he has not voluntarily offered to say more than what he’s already revealed about them.
I mention Mike because he’s both cool and also recently said something that really got me thinking. On the day he delivered his words of wisdom, it was a quiet time in our writing center, so we had an opportunity to chat about a variety of subjects. Somehow, I can’t even remember how now, the subject of my goatee came up. (I’d let it sprout out again after being clean shaven for months.) While talking, I confessed to having mixed feelings about it because it’s so grey now. I told him that it had been jet-black and really groovy back when I was younger. After hearing this, he crossed his arms—I’ve noticed this to be one of his mannerisms—got that half-smile look on his face, and then said, “So you’ve got grey hair. Embrace it!
His words were exactly the right ones to speak at exactly that moment. They made me realize how much of an imposter I sometimes can be. I mean, come on, I call myself a stoic, have read and studied all the great stoic texts, including Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, a book I would advise every human being alive today to read and to ready carefully, and yet here I was whining about having facial hair that was a little discolored due to age. Michael’s words embarrassed me and made me realize that I need to live stoicism not just understand its tenets. I need to fully accept that I am getting older. That I am aging. That this body I have is, slowly and inexorably, fading away. I may not be dead yet, but I am certainly on my way down the path.
By the way, the stoics believe that one of the few things we can count on is that decay and impermanence are part of the natural order of things. Thus, fighting against the aging process is like trying really hard to keep the sun from rising in the east each morning. Michael had helped me see that embracing my greyness was a way of practicing stoicism.
I want to finish by thanking Michael for giving me a metaphorical slap in the face. I certainly deserved the sting of his words.
Thinker Boy: Blog & Art 