Lately I’ve been receiving spam for “Life Experience” degrees. I haven’t gone as far as clicking the link, but a cursory scan of the email suggests that there may not only be some course work involved, but also even a price for such a document. I don’t know how many people have gone through this program to acquire a degree in this particular discipline, but I would suspect that through the help of a printer and Microsoft Word, one could probably save some time and money by simply creating a diploma on their own and printing one out themselves.
By definition, I would assume that simply living and having experiences are more than adequate prerequisites for this degree. But I do have questions:
Are there various schools offering this program?
If so, is there I some kind of accreditation process?
Can one earn a PhD in “life experience” or is just a BS offered?
I would assume a “doctor” of life experience should be reserved for those of us more advanced in age? I’d say 80 years old, 75 years absolute minimum. And as far as a Masters, maybe 60, OK, 50 years old?
And since it is life experience, which is often a platitude given to the mistakes one makes in life, if you’re a colossal screw-up, do you actually get higher marks for the course work?
And finally, is the guy who invented bottled water kicking himself for not coming up with this?
I don’t know if they’re selling a lot of these things, but something tells me if they’ve sold one, we might be in trouble. No man is an island and any man’s death diminishes me and so does their stupidity. This is not to say that my own ignorance at various times hasn’t brought the race down a few pegs once or twice. For that, I apologize, Humanity.
Degrees (“Life Experience” and otherwise) aside, it is daunting how much I still have to learn. I’ve been reading this lately:
and in a poetic symmetry, I’ve been able to comprehend and retain almost precisely the same percentage of this book that Mankind really knows about the universe.
Infinitesimal.
While I can’t complain of my experience thus far, it’s clear (even before reading that book) I’m not going to cover it all before I sign off. I may accumulate enough knowledge to qualify for certain things as I progress in age, and who knows, I might even become a “doctor” of something before it’s all said and done, though it’s a safe bet it’d only be in an honorary fashion and most certainly not in physics.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, delusional and maybe a little morbid. My life in a nutshell.
However, I have become more aware of the cracks in my character and my limitations and hopefully I have miles to go before I sleep. It certainly still feels that way, but the course is set and I can do my best as I proceed through the valley of darkness…
And still for my children, the future is wide open. Which made me think:
LBJ‘s father died in 1937 and while he saw him elected to the US House of Representatives, he obviously didn’t live to see his son make it to the highest office in the land. Nor did Richard Nixon’s father, nor Gerald Ford’s (biological or step), Jimmy Carter’s, Ronald Reagan‘s, George Bush I‘s, Bill Clinton’s (biological or step), or Barack Obama’s. Aside from Joe Kennedy, who wanted nothing more than to see his son become President of the United States (and in a a tragic irony, also lived to see him assassinated), the only other guy who saw his son grow up to be president in the modern era was a man who actually grew up to be president himself (Bush I). And most historians rank the father a far better commander-in-chief than his son (Bush II).
What I’m saying is that I’m probably not going to grow up to be president and if either one of my kids do, I’m probably not going to be around to see it.
But then again, it’s actually possible somebody with a real degree in something like biology or medicine or neurology might discover some kind of life extension. And if they do crack it, Oprah (who most certainly will have immediate access to such treatment, if she doesn’t already) will be boasting about how 150 is the new 80 (In which case, I think the people handing out PhDs in Life Experience will have to adjust their curriculum accordingly, of course).
Maybe then I will have a shot at becoming a physicist. Or president. Hypothetically speaking, I wonder which path would shake up the universe more?
Again, according to Brian Greene, it’s possible that there might even be a universe somewhere out there where I actually already am president. Or a physicist. Or an astronaut…
Or anything.
Now before you trounce my ego, I apparently don’t have exclusive rights to this. It goes for all of us. There’s one of you out there running the show and screwing things up, too.
But for now, we’re stuck here, for better or worse. And I don’t know what its future holds. Physics and the presidency are really just generic examples of the many possible outcomes. And how I pursue the path I’m consciously aware of, in this dimension, has evolved over the past few years.
A fire breaks out in a room. I fear that I will be burned alive, I hope that I will survive. But there is a door in front of me, and if I calmly wade through the smoke, I just might escape. I can “hope” to survive all I want, but I will most certainly burn if I don’t actually move. And fear is nowhere near as essential in this situation as just covering my nose, fighting through the smoke, and finding the door. The only thing that’s actually real is the fire and the door. Hope and fear are essentially just energy spent on something that doesn’t exist yet – possible outcomes.
When I look into my children’s eyes, when I watch them play, smile, cry – I am filled with awe, hope – as I suspect most parents are. My children are so new to the world, they don’t even know what “hope” is, at least in terms of defining it. I suspect that even at this young age, they feel it, but I don’t think they dwell on it – I think they’re too busy being present. And while I certainly know they are sometimes afraid, I don’t know if they even know what fear is yet. Certainly fear has its heritable origins and evolutionary advantages, but at least that paralyzing, neurotic, pointless kind – that stuff is learned along the way and I think some of us develop an almost unhealthy passion for fear, as well as hope, as we wade through adolescence.
But it’s the tricky. You don’t want a kid to think he can fly and hurl himself out a window, but you also don’t want to discourage the prospect of her building a pair of working wings. I want to protect them from fear. I want them to grow up to be wise, to be strong, to be decent, to be intelligent, to be safe. To be brave.
And to fail. Because they won’t wind up being any of the other stuff if they don’t fail, dust themselves off, and try again. But that desire is still all a part of that fragile thing we call hope, because right now I’m just trying to teach them to use the toilet and dress themselves in a way that doesn’t psychologically scar them. It’s no coincidence that “shitting your pants” is a colloquialism for failure. We each come into this world doing it, but after a bit of trial and error, most of us get our act together and figure out how to use the toilet and go on with our lives and wish for the best.
But it’s not an overnight thing, one step at a time.
There’s a fantastic book on writing by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird
and I’ll leave it to you, gentle reader, to come up with the title for a subsequent book on potty training employing the same day by day philosophy.
Whatever obstacles hindered Great Men, they were likely far more demanding than anything I had to overcome. But as I’ve matured, the wish to be a Great Man has been eclipsed with the ambition to be a Good one. It’s not any easier. To return to my earlier analogy, for my purposes: A Great Man may or may not escape the burning room, but The Good One prevented it from going up in flames in the first place. They were both potty trained.
One of my favorite movies is The Verdict, starring Paul Newman, directed by the Sidney Lumet, with a screenplay by David Mamet. Great Men.
There’s a wonderful scene at the end when Newman’s character, attorney Frank Galvin, gives his summation saying:
“in my religion, we are told ‘Act as if ye have faith, and faith will be given to you.’”
It’s a powerful line and a fascinating phrase. The way it’s delivered, directed and, of course, written, makes it sound as if it were something out the Bible. In fact, all these years, I thought it actually was in the Bible.
It’s not. Not the exact line. Mamet made it up. Certainly the “spirit” of the line is in various places in the Bible, but the exact phrase is in the Gospel According to St. David Mamet.
See this article by Jacob Freeze:
and this one one by Kevin G. Barkes:
http://www.kgbreport.com/archives/2011/11/30/index.shtml
I must admit I’m intimidated even typing the words in reference to him let alone aspiring to create work as powerful and lasting as Mr. Mamet. In fact my little “room on fire” analogy isn’t in the same universe as this:
For that matter, my entire essay isn’t as good as this one:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
But while I continue to have my doubts about my own work, my hope is that I’m not disqualified for false starts and able to simply keep running the marathon. Or as another brilliant writer, Aaron Sorkin put it:
However it all shakes out, I should easily scare up enough credits for a “Life Experience Degree”.
C I P R I A N I 
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