life philosophy

1. a wonderful honor
AARON J. LAWLER | HUMANITIES
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2. I O W E A D E B T TO T H O S E B E F O R E M E
To be speaking today, is not only a great honor but also incredibly humbling.
If I am skilled as an educator – in any way – it is simply because I had the
good fortune of having excellent mentors (including my parents and
teachers, and of course my amazing wife!), I work with and am inspired by
amazing colleagues and friends, and because I try to be well-read.
There is no special secret to my craft.
I simply believe that education is the way we can make our community the
kind of place where we combat ignorance, take intellectual risks, and
champion the cause of civilizing in an uncivilized world.
a simple romantic

3. W H AT I T H I N K …
Thinking
about college
Education, to me, is sacred. Education is
how we solve all of our problems, its
how we better ourselves as individuals
and as a society, and is perhaps, single-
handedly the most important endeavor
humankind has undertaken. Schools
should be Meccas, where learning is
celebrated, and where people long to
return to share what they have done.
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R E M E M B E R I N G W H Y W E G O TO C O L L E G E
Do we… as faculty, as staff, as admin, and as
students “fall for the myths that our culture has
told us”? The foremost of these myths, is that we
go to college so that we can be successful in a
career, and that when we are successful in our
career we will be fulfilled.
Although I am not the first to do so (and won’t
be the last), I have to wonder: “Is that why we go
to college?” Or “Is that why college exists?”
a Retrospect
Brooks, David, and Ernest L. Boyer. Campus life: In search of community. InterVarsity Press, 2019.

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A N I N S T I T U T I O N O F P E A K S A N D VA L L E Y S
a metaphor of mountains
In searching for the answer to the deep questions about “why we go to college” I came across a beautiful and
repeated symbol: mountains. Mountains reveal themselves in bizarre ways. From a distance we gain a broader picture,
but still very incomplete. From close up we gain great insight into the details, but the whole of the mountain’s majesty
is obscured. We only see what we need to or get to see. Education seems very mountainous to me.

6. Crossing
THE THREE MOUNTAINS

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M AT S U O B A S H Ō ( 1 6 4 4 – 1 6 9 4 )
In the Spring of 1689,
Matsuo Bashō journeyed
across The Three
Mountains of Dewa.
He hoped that when his
readers viewed his work,
doing so would transport
them to special, mental
states of peace and bliss.
In his travelogue, he wrote:
Narrow Road,
Deep North
“The peaks of clouds;
Have crumbled into fragments –
The moonlit mountain.”

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T h e S e c o n d M o u n t a i n :
T h e Q u e s t f o r a M o r a l L i f e
The First
Mountain
The first mountain that people in
Western culture have to face (and
dominate) is the mountain of
personal goals. These are the
reasons society tells us to go to
college, to get a good job, and
to be successful. The mountain’s
obstacles are things like meeting
objectives, ambitions, and
achievements.
This is the mountain that many of us think college is
designed for: we think we go to college to get the
roadmap in order to navigate to our peak.
But what if that is incomplete?

9. T h e S e c o n d M o u n t a i n :
T h e Q u e s t f o r a M o r a l L i f e
The Second
Mountain
To find true fulfillment, Brooks
decided we need to climb the
second mountain: living for
relationships.
When college students graduate,
the first (and really only) question
they ask, “What am I going to do with
my life?” And the answer college’s
typically offer is: “You can do
whatever you want!” or “Follow your
passion and chart your own course!”
The problem with this is two-fold. First, the question is wrong. The
question college graduates should ask, is “Where should I devote
myself?” And the answer should be: “Live for relationships.”
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W H AT C O L L E G E ’ S A R E R E A L LY G O O D AT
College = Relationships
Students are knights-errant on the journey to prove themselves virtuous and skilled. Professors are their
mentors, who have undertaken a sacred charge, of imparting knowledge. But students are also forming
relationships with Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Galileo, and Mozart. The masters, never die. They become their
wisdom; they become their poetry; they become their music. And that lives on through relationships.

11. Crossing
Bashō lef t the life of the
samurai to be a poet.
He climbed the fir st mountain,
and found he needed to scale
the second.

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T h e S c i e n c e s o f t h e A r t i f i c i a l
The Third
Mountain
Economist and cognitive
psychologist, Herbert A. Simon
posed a theory, that all started
with an ant. Simple and rather
unintelligent, the little ant
wanders across a beach. As it
does, a complex, irregular, and
weaving pattern emerges across
the sand. But it is not the ant that
is complicated – it is the
environment. What if humans are
not so different?
To be human is to live a complex life. Yet, there is comfort
in knowing that in all of that complexity there are familiar
patterns – patterns of thought, of behavior, and of
experience. And truth be told, we prefer the simple to
the complex.

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T H E T H I R D M O U N TA I N : S I M P L I C I T Y A N D T H E I M P E R F E C T
Understanding Complexity
Bashō embraced
the two Zen
Buddhist ideals:
wabi and sabi.
The first, means
to be satisfied
by simplicity.
The second:
appreciation of
the imperfect.
Bashō hoped that
by living these
ideals together,
people would
learn to love what
life has to offer.
Simon talks of
sticks and rocks
making our
worlds complex;
Bashō argues that
those surprises
are what make life
worth living.

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R E M E M B E R I N G W H Y W E G O TO C O L L E G E
Is this not what teaching and learning is all about: seeing
the complex as an interwoven mesh of the simple?
Bashō perhaps understood this better than anyone. The
beauty of the complex comes from the simple. He wrote:
“Violets – how precious; on a mountain path.”
Introspection

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U N D E R TA K I N G O U R D A I LY J O U R N E Y
Education is a
Sacred Quest
These are daily challenges.
All Three Mountains are
hallowed ground, and
crossing each is a
magnanimous and honorable
undertaking. It is necessary to
ascend one mountain to
arrive at the next.
Colleges are where we learn
to surmount each mountain.
Our institutions should be
cathedrals, where education
is revered as sacred.

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E D U C AT I O N I S T H E S O L U T I O N
What are my takeaways?
There is no more
an important task
than: achieving
one’s goals,
learning to live for
something bigger
than oneself, and
connecting with
the beauty
around us.
The work of
college may in
fact be the most
important work
we undertake.
Because the work
of college is the
work of the self.
Earlier in my
career I thought
of education as
important work,
whereas today, I
think it is more
than important –
it is everything.
I believe I owe a
debt to my
mentors. I hope
to walk in their
footsteps.

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E D U C AT I O N I S T H E S O L U T I O N
Wisdom and
courage
When we surmount the Three
Mountains, I believe we are
fulfilling what Bashō expected:
the important work of the soul. I
also believe we are following the
ideas Brooks shared about
achieving our personal goals and
living for relationships.
We are following the way: the
relentless quest for truth.
This is the quest we are on as
sage and samurai.
Go forth.

18. Thank You, truly
Basho, Matsuo. The narrow road to the deep north and other
travel sketches. Penguin UK, 2020.
Brooks, David. The second mountain: The quest for a moral life.
Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2020.
Brooks, D., & Boyer, E. L. (2019). Campus life: In search of
community. InterVarsity Press.
Simon, Herbert A. The sciences of the artificial. MIT press, 2019.
T H A N K Y O U F O R H U M O R I N G M E !