The College Beat: one Year on
. . .
It is sometimes a striking experience to catch sight of yourself in the mirror.
Where there once was cropped sandy-blond hair, there is now invincible silver (or no hair at all). The eyes, though wide and deeply blue, are a touch sunken and accompanied by crow’s feet. The jowls are a bit more jowly and the muscles are a bit less muscly. I tease my medical students that, one day, it dawns on you that the patient you have been seeing for twenty-five years has, inexplicably, become old. And then that unforgiving mirror smiles back at you and insists, “So have you.”
Age, it seems, comes for us all.
Now, mind you, I refuse to ever declare myself “old.” I will only confess to aging gracefully.
Done properly, what accompanies age are memories and experience, wisdom and insight. To go from a neophyte med student to a wizened physician, from a frightened new dad to sage street-smart father, from an ambling innocent who knows no tragedy to a limping fighter who has known life’s wars—this is what it means to grow old.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
These kids (if I may call them that) are wise—but it is a young wisdom. It is a wisdom borne of interpreting a listing culture and discerning their place in it.
That is why it has been an utter delight to meet and publish the many talented young writers for The College Beat. In his essay, “The Orthodoxy of Hamlet,” G. K. Chesterton criticizes aesthetes—that is, those who are “expert” in that which is beautiful.
They have goaded and jaded their artistic feelings too much to enjoy anything simply beautiful. They are aesthetes; and the definition of an aesthetic is a man who is experienced enough to admire a good picture, but not inexperienced enough to see it. But if you really took simple people, honorable peasants, kind old servants, dreamy tramps, genial thieves, and brigands, to see Hamlet, they would simply be sorry for Hamlet. That is to say, they would simply appreciate the fact that it was a great tragedy.
Those of us who have been around long enough can look at the world through experience but also jaded eyes. Our sensibility may be keen but also a bit warped by battle. The innocent have a wisdom that the experienced can’t always boast. Sometimes, they can see the picture while we can only admire it.
In reading this year’s many College Beat submissions, I was struck by the young wisdom of the students who wrote about Teddy Roosevelt and Karl Marx, music as a form of worship and sports as a means of evangelizing, the idea of a university and the faith on its campus, the oldness of the Church and the newness of a pope. These kids (if I may call them that) are wise—but it is a young wisdom. It is a wisdom borne of interpreting a listing culture and discerning their place in it. It is a wisdom arising from ineradicable hope that has been seared in still-aching pain. It is a wisdom emerging from a belief in God even when you can’t always sense him.
In his song, “My Back Pages,” Bob Dylan muses about the cocksureness of his youth. There was, he insinuates, a righteous conviction that, without experience (as Flannery O’Connor would warn), leads to harshness.
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
The college students writing for us are, in fact, young as Bob Dylan would have them be young. The one thing they know is that they don’t know it all. They believe in God. They hunger for meaning. They lament brokenness. They relish grace. And they love, brilliantly, through it all.
So, thank you to all of our young writers and to all who have read their work and written to us about them. The College Beat will return in September with the opening of the new school year.
But for now, this gray-haired stranger who smiles at me in the mirror—this aging, but not old man—is going to dive into a summer read and, perhaps, a College Beat essay or two, and think about life for a while.
May we all read broadly, think brilliantly, live courageously, and sing without fail:
I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.