Learning is the Thing for You

May and I were walking the dog last Saturday afternoon, and I said, 'Six weeks from Monday we're back in school.' 'You're pathetic,' she replied.

I've never been very good at vacationing. When I was at Yankee, I rarely used the whole two weeks. I felt I couldn't be away that long -- delusions of indispensability -- but mostly, I didn't know what to do with myself. I don't have any hobbies besides reading, I don't play golf, I'm not into gardening or home improvement, and there's nothing worth watching on TV. Beaches are hot and dry and swimming is cold and wet. Vacationing feels more like work than work to me. I need projects. This summer, I'm writing an article for The Old Farmer's Almanac, I'm acting in a show at The Peterborough Players, and I'm trying to write a book. I also have two cords of firewood to split and stack. So I plan out my days, hour by hour. When the weather is good, I get up early and bicycle to Carr's Store for the newspaper. It's a ten-mile round trip, which takes about an hour and gives me some needed aerobic exercise. Shower and then a leisurely breakfast spent reading the entire Boston Globe -- the sports page first, then the front page, City and Region, Living, Business, the comics, TV-Radio, the works.

That usually gets me to nine o'clock, clean, caffeinated, and well-informed. Now what? An hour of research for the article. An hour spent memorizing lines. An hour of thinking about the book. Lunch. An hour of reading for pleasure. Another hour on the book. An hour splitting wood. Walk the dog. Figure out how many more weeks until school starts again. Annoy my wife. Dinner. TV news. Watch a video, or go to a play, or read. Lights out.
I spent the summer after my first year of teaching recovering from something close to a physical and emotional breakdown. I also got some training that allowed me to have a far more enjoyable second year. The next summer, I went to Yale for six weeks to study Chaucer. That was hugely enjoyable. Last summer we drove all over the country, visiting friends, seeing sights, wearing out one car and demonstrating beyond a doubt that we are no longer in our twenties. When I look back at those summers, I see that I was happiest when I was learning something. Learning has never felt like work to me. There's a passage in The Once and Future King (my favorite book) where the young Arthur is feeling sad, and Merlin, his tutor, gives him this advice.

'The best thing for being sad 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 at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor 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 which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.' Five weeks from Monday we're back in school.