On the Intellectual Life

The intellectual life is such a beautiful and rewarding aspect of our human lives and yet it is so easy to let it fall to the wayside, especially once we leave the formal classroom setting. I am by no means a great intellectual, but I hope I am at least a reasonable intellectual. I have put much thought to the matter of how too pursue further intellectual studies without paying for classes, neglecting my family or becoming a philosophy professor (which I am not at all qualified to be). I have come up with a few ways that  have been quite rewarding for the time and effort put into them. 

Mark Twain once (or possibly many times) said, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."  I held strictly to that rule all through my formal education by frequently immersing myself in studies that interested me as a supplement to what I was required to study. I must confess that sometimes  I even pursued my own interests instead of what I was required to study. One practice I used all throughout college was to move slowly but constantly through the works of the late and esteemed G. K. Chesterton. I have not come close to reading even half of what he has written, but I have a good start on his work. This is a practice I have tried to maintain out here in the world of work. Admittedly I might go several weeks without this reading but I always come back to it and it has provide me much insight into my own life. 

Almost two years ago a good friend of mine, a homeschooling mother, approached my wife and me asking us to lead a discussion group for highschoolers on A Tale of Two Cities by the great Charles Dickens. We accepted and lead a small group of eight or nine students through this great work. I had never read this book when I was asked but read it several times to prepare myself for the seminar. We both enjoyed teaching the group so much that the next year we lead seminar on english poetry and will soon be starting a seminar on Dracula and Frankenstein. 

My last method was more or less handed to me by my brother in law who lent me a couple of audio books just after I had purchased my iPhone. When I am working with wood I am usually working alone and there is much time spent in repetitive tasks such as sanding or staining during which I can listen with quite a bit of my attention on the audio book. To be fair I listen to quite a bit of fiction, but I also engage regularly with the classics or philosophical works. Most recently I listened to Plato's Dialogue Pheado. I get most of the audiobooks free off of iTunes in the Podcasts section or in the iTunes U section. Many of the books are from librivox, which is also in the iTunes Podcasts section.

I have enjoyed getting to continue my intellectual life and look forward to many more books and discussions. 

Manalive

“Man found alive with two legs” is a telegram sent from one Innocent Smith to an old college friend Arthur Inglewood in G.K. Chesterton’s fiction piece titled Manalive. Innocent Smith is a sane man who has discovered that the key to keeping existence new and exciting is to depart from all that he loves for some period of time inorder to return to it anew. The telegram itself is never specifically explained but might have been the result of having tied up his legs, and after hobbling about on his knees for a day and he is exhilarated at having rediscovered the ability to walk and run and kick once again.

This idea is prevalent in much of Chesterton’s writing from one of his earliest works, Orthodoxy when he speaks of the youthfulness of God, who, like a child playing a game cries, “do it again”, but to the sun to rise again and for the grass to grow again. He creates daisies like a child will draw flower after flower, simple because he enjoys creating them. It is by growing old in sin that we grow tired of these things.

Nearly a year ago I asked a man I was working with at the time if he were going to have any fun that weekend. He replied something along the lines of, with a wife and child he was no longer able to do fun things.  At the time I laughed it off with him, but later as I considered those words I was saddened by them. That is indeed a popular sentiment at least in the current media; television sitcoms especially hold those tenants.

I didn’t get married to no longer have fun. I got married because I wanted someone to share all the fun with (I know there is suffering in marriage, I am not addressing that right now). The tale of Manalive offers something greater. It claims that you can have all the fun. Innocent Smith will break into his own house and steal his own wine. He will elope with his wife, a thousand times and a thousand different ways. He does this because he remains in love with her enough to pursue her time and time again, and pursues her time and time again, in order to remain in love with her. In this way he can do things that look from an outward observer to be the sins of adultery and stealing, but these actions, because it is with his wife and his house, are perfectly innocent.

Deo Gratias