Thought Provoking Thursday
In this Issue: In Defense of the Unoptimized Life
Today is a jam packed day for me meeting wise and I have the good fortune to be working at the Liz Cheney Face to Face tonight (I was not assigned to the student event, so I can’t give you a recap; you’ll have to rely on your Deac to get to Wait Chapel and tell you about it afterwards). So today I have a very quick Daily Deac for you.
In Defense of the Unoptimized Life
This morning, my boss sent our team this article, “In Defense of the Unoptimized Life.” Here’s a couple of snippets to give you the taste of it, but it is worth a read.
“At the start of the new year, I feel guilt-tripped by Twitter threads. Whenever I scroll some guy is telling me to optimize life so I can ‘be productive.’… When I try to follow this advice, I may temporarily get more stuff done, but it comes at the expense of my soul…. Instead, I would argue for the unoptimized life….When we focus too hard on being a little better every day, we destroy the ability to be inspired.”
This is where the article really hooked me, because I think of our students and how hyperorganized they are, how overscheduled some of them seem to be, and how eager they are to check all the boxes they think they need to check. And I do wonder, are they inspired? Do they even have room to think about those things?
More from this article: “We get so caught up in the daily grind, in the pursuit of the next step of the ladder, that we miss the point of being. I think the default state of life is that we will get filled up with small things. Whether small productivity improvements or minor inconveniences, it doesn’t matter. Either take away our chance to focus on something more.
In David Foster Wallace’s commencement address, ‘This is Water,’ [aside: one of the best pieces of writing/oratory I have ever heard, a must listen/read if you are not familiar] he stated, ‘The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think.'”
I started my class the other day with a slide that said in big letters “Tell me something good” and invited people to share something good that has happened in their lives. The class was a little shy at first, but they came up with some sweet answers: a sibling had a big academic achievement, it was a beloved grandparent’s birthday, a student got a gig they had hoped/worked for, someone’s parents were coming to visit this weekend. And we all got to take a moment and feel good for the positive things happening to people (at least that’s how I felt).
Intentional gratitude can help us savor the little moments and tiny joys that build up over time – if we pay attention to them. Similarly, having space to reflect, and dream, and notice, can help students be inspired (by their surroundings, what they are reading in class, art or music or dance, etc.).
So as we think about helping to guide and nurture our college students, where are the places where we can gently nudge them to make time and space for inspiration? For gratitude? What messages can we share with them – either overtly, or through our own example as parents and loved ones – about striking a balance between productivity and holding space for inspiration and reflection, and how that practice might get them farther in the end? How can we nudge them to read ‘This is Water‘ and consider how they want to use their powers of thinking and attention as they enter adulthood?
That’s our food for thought for this Thursday.