If I were a teacher, I would teach Happiness, Grief, Justice, Kindness, Grace, Truth, Responsibility, Mercy, and the like – big murky very human ideas, roping in history, thinkers, writers, artists, facts as guest professors; a syllabus of notions, not information, so my students would begin to wonder for themselves why being matters. I would teach subjects no one’s expert in, because to define them is to commence one’s education not conclude it and the only correct answer is the one you wrest yourself from a wilderness of whys. Isn’t that what the humanities are supposed to do, help us be human, not stuff us with facts but empty us of absurdities?

To teach this way would be intolerable to most institutions. Modernity for half a millennium has sliced and diced reality into smaller and smaller chunks, each with its facts and rules. This is the way of Science, and it is the only way if information is your destination. A pain in my shoulder takes me to a shoulder doc, a blood disorder to a blood specialist, but where do we go for a doubt spasm or crud in our soul? In the old days, Religion treated such ailments, curates cured, but today priest, rabbis, imams have lost authority and thus confidence. “Who are you,” their impatient patients growl, “to tell me how to feel? What gives you the right!” Shrinks listen – and prescribe chemicals – but seldom the more terrible therapy of thought.

I would teach these subjects not because I know them but because I don’t. The teacher in such a relation is not the one with answers but with questions. Any right answer would be wrong, its certitude disbarring disruptive alternatives. Montaigne got it right back in the day: “Que sais-je?” he summarized his learning; “What do I know?” Knowing a lot, he knew a lot was a little, a molecule in an ocean of ignorance.

Parents would object to such instruction, of which one object was to question one’s parents. We crave certainty not doubt, credentials not incredulity, the complacency of knowing not the anguish of thinking. We want to arrive at our destination, not just pause on our way to who knows where. My teaching, wise or foolish, would be peppered by protesters, I’d be summoned before committees to keep my job. Thus paychecks do make cowards of us all.

So reckless such teaching I shudder to attempt it, even in my dreams. We humans are both curious and furious about disturbance. We want to know, we insist, but mostly we don’t. What’s the good of knowing? Define Happiness, Grief, Justice, etc. – AARGH! – are you mad? Let sleeping dogs lie! Why upset the applecart? What’s the use! Believe what you’re told, chorus Amen on cue, can’t fight City Hall!

Teaching takes courage and standing, both of which I lack. Instead, to amuse myself, I muse. Impotence is an impregnable fortress – “Who cares what he thinks, that old crank?” A friend urges me to spread my words. I’ll try – with trepidation – for to be trusted is to be restrained. If a teacher teaches doubt and his student shoots himself, does his student receive a passing or failing grade?

Thinking, it turns out, may be a bad idea. If I define Happiness, Grief, Justice, etc., mightn’t my findings condemn me? What if I discover my life has been wrong all along?

Younger, I didn’t think much, couldn’t afford to, had to keep my end up. Near my end my end doesn’t matter much. To while the hours I’ve enrolled in Lifelong Learning, myself my professor.