What does it all mean?

As the calendar opens to August, this is the first year in long memory that I’m not preparing for the opening of the Fall academic semester as either a student or teacher. No syllabi to prepare, no faculty development requirements to meet, no sighing as summer’s freedom ends. The school year’s regimentation and organization has always suited me, and I like it, going way back to the school box with new pencils and crayons, even the treat of one box of sweetened “school cereal” for breakfasts during the first week. So now what?

Of all I gleaned from my deep reading of The Count of Monte Cristo, the above thought-train is perhaps the most surprising, at least to me. The book, in general, is about an innocent man who, thanks to the jealousies and devious machinations of others who are looking out for their own interests, ends up imprisoned for fourteen years in a lightless, solitary dungeon in the prison of Chateau d’If. When he does eventually escape, the story turns to his quest for revenge, a quest he feels represents the hand of Providence, both divine and just.

Apart from the physical exertion of holding a 1300-page book close enough to my face to read it while simultaneously nursing chronic elbow tendonitis, I enjoyed this book a great deal, largely because I was raising so many questions about the way things work in the world. I won’t bore you with them all, but the chief question of the story, I think, for me is this:

How do we understand the course of events that happens in our lives?

Possibilities, played out in the book, include

·      Providence and/or Fate

·      Seeing oneself as the appointed hand used by Providence

·      The commission of an immoral deed that unleashes its own inevitable end/consequence

·      Looking for confirmation that you are doing the right thing or on the right path and what that confirmation looks like

·      What, if anything, can be done to change (assumed to be) predetermined outcomes

As I read, I couldn’t help but reject the overall premise that this was all one small divine drama unfolding on the world stage—God punishing evildoers, avenging the innocent man. “No,” I thought, “this is just the story of one man’s revenge, and God is just asked to be the wingman, so to speak.” I used to believe in Providence, some sort of hand directing all things toward some Good End, but that’s not a story I live by any longer. A Texas woman drove the family station wagon into a lake, drowning all four of her children, claiming in defense that God told her to do it. Psychologists countered with a postpartum depression diagnosis, which the woman rejected. The woman was a devote churchgoer, so assuming she read her Old Testament, she’d know God does command such things from time to time. She might be forgiven for thinking this, no?

If you do believe in some sort of Guiding Hand or Force or Will directing the course of all things, or, if your belief tends toward nihilism (meaningless), I wish to recommend the following:

First, for the Guiding Hand folks, I get it, it’s nice to have something Big looking out for you and you might even ultimately be right, who knows, but in the meantime, consider how often you’ve been wrong about the way your desired outcome gelled with what you determined God’s will to be. At least have the humility to temper your claims with “this is what I think or believe Providence to be saying” rather than “this IS what Providence wants.”

Second, for the nihilists, consider the lesser-known Optimistic Nihilism: true to nihilism, this concedes the point that the universe is a place of meaninglessness. No grand architecture, no teleological consummation of a grand plan. But whereas nihilism entails a bleak fatalism and bend toward death and nothingness, the optimistic part (oxymoronically?) suggests each person can still cultivate meaning in their life, after accepting ultimate meaninglessness of the whole. This is just slightly different from Existentialism but both philosophies put the human in the driver’s seat for creating meaning rather than deriving predetermined meaning/purpose relative to some larger governing being.

Third, for all humans, be comforted to know in advance that whatever your thoughts on this, you don’t have it quite right. This is a bold claim, I know, and entails an absolute claim even as I struggle to advocate against all absolutes. This used to make my students crazy, especially in ethics, because if you think through something long enough, almost anything can be morally justified. Sometimes we devolve into anything can be true or right or be possible and then aren’t we just awash in relativity, nothing better or more right or truer than anything else?

Patience, grasshopper. Here’s the dealio: might there be something of Fate in the way that certain moral wounds fester until the whole person is diseased and destroyed? Yes. Might someone morally wounded and diseased change their ways and the “inevitable” end becomes no longer inevitable? Yes. Can you be an optimist and a nihilist at the same time? Yes. Can you take your marching orders from your idea of a supreme being? Yes. Can you create your own meaningful life, apart from the existence in a supreme being? Yes. Multiple truths or possibilities, some contradictory, some complementary, all existing at the same time. Needfully so, too, because no one person can see IT (whatever IT is) all at once, in full. Monte Cristo comes to see this about his own beliefs at the end:

                  “in God’s hands alone reside supreme power and infinite wisdom.”

The Count concedes, understands his folly and mistake. Those who don’t believe in God or Providence or Fate or anything like that will reject the Count’s conclusion but only because they don’t believe “supreme power and infinite wisdom” exists in any one location/being per se. Those who do believe in God et al, however, might take note. If you think you know what that God is up to, you are probably wrong, and maybe that should give you pause. (Project 2025 people, here’s looking at you.)

So, the school year: right, I’ve lost my organizing principle, my derived purpose. I’m no longer a teacher with daily goal posts, course objectives, and assessment data reports. Who am I? What should my days and seasons be filled with and what should be the rhythm? How do I figure out what is meaningful without those emails from students telling me that the class made a difference for them or the evaluations about how boring and useless the class was?

I’ll just have to create something new for myself.