A thread on mentors:

In high school, I was lucky enough to be mentored by three people: Mr. and Mrs. K, a couple, and Mr. L, their old friend who also happened to be my school’s headmaster. Every year I have more appreciation for them and their wisdom.

Mrs. K I met first: she advised the school paper. She taught me how to write, which turns out actually meant she taught me how to think; she also told me to go to Harvard rather than Liberty (!) because “a faith not worth testing is not worth having”.

For her, the school paper was a way to get students to help each other. “Who isn’t noticed in this school?” she’d ask, and then make the paper shine a light on them. I was slow to learn that the whole point was helping people; she was very patient (but very firm) in teaching it

She had a rule that you could never talk about someone who wasn’t in the room. It seemed ridiculous at the time, but it was so smart. It enforced kindness and thoughtfulness on a bunch of high schoolers who would have happily gossiped to get a social leg up

She taught me that you can edit your first draft down by 50% and say more rather than less; that thinking well meant connecting the details to the big picture; that knowing the big picture was mostly asking “What is good and loving in this situation? How do I do that?”

My senior year, Mrs. K realized I was bright but lacked the equipment to actually think well: so her husband, who was ill at the time, set up my classes so I would be able to spend an hour every day talking philosophy with him (he was dean of students and so could do that)

All of this sounds like I went to a fancy private school: I did not. I went to an old rural charter school that served as my towns public school. You have never heard of my high school (though I loved it). These teachers went above and beyond.

And so, every day before lunch, I would sit with Mr K and just... talk. He gave me his full attention. There were no essays; and he’d give readings and say things like, “give this a try and see how you like it.”

He gave me Simulacra and Simulation and said “you won’t be able to get this now, and in a few years you’ll look back and realize it’s kind of basic and mostly just hard because it’s very, very French.” He was right

He gave me fly overs of Plato and Socrates and Kant. He talked about how to teach, how to think well. We talked about levels of abstraction and metaphysics and what the point of education was. We talked about Hamlet and Heart of Darkness and why it’s better than Great Gatsby.

He called the class “Big Ideas.” I didn’t realize at the time what I was getting: on the DL, it was about how to live, how to seriously consider your life, to use literature and philosophy not to pass tests but to become wise.

Reading heart of darkness? Meditate on what it means to have restraint, the proper role of desire, what it means to be a good man. Reading Plato? Ask yourself: what am I dedicated to? Truth? Love? Justice? What’s my highest aim?

What’s funny is that looking back I can see that all of this was a coherent project: Operation Let’s Make This Puppet A Real Boy. These were old, master educators (they retired the year I left), and they were flexing: they knew what education was for and they were good at it

And so as part of this project (I now realize) they arranged for me to interview the headmaster (Mr. L) for the school paper once a month for three years, sophomore through senior. Mr. L was an old friend of the K’s; he retired with them.

And Mrs K would assign me what seemed to me like the most ridiculous, fru-fru prompts: What’s the point of teaching? How do you lead well? What’s special about this school? How do you handle adversity?

Here’s what you have to understand about Mr. L: he’s the person I’m thinking of when I write stuff like this: https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1131138997646966784?s=20

But I’d come in and ask these questions and he’d poke fun at me for how crazy abstract they were. He was (is!) a pretty down to earth guy. He wouldn’t cite Plato or Kant or anything; but whenever I talked to the K’s, they’d tell me he was the wisest man they knew

(They were old friends and he was the reason they’d come to my high school—which, please Lord, give me friends I can grow old and wise with, and who will help me make people human)

Anyway. Once he was done laughing at the questions and saying “how the hell am I supposed to know?”, he’d lean back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk, stare out the window for a minute, and then say, “Well, I suppose...” and then launch in to dropping wisdom.

It was never cliched. Or rather, it turns out that most true things are hidden in cliches, but they’re meant to be spoken by someone who is very much alive and alert and present, who is trying to help and pay attention, and Mr. L was that.

I didn’t realize until later what was being given: I got to sit and watch a very wise man ponder out loud how to live well, when you have power and responsibility over a lot of what’s around you, and when you’re maybe smart enough that arrogance would be understandable.

His answer, as best I can make out looking back, was “Don’t take yourself too seriously. Care for people. Remove bad people, encourage good ones. Equip people and then get out of their way—most cleverness is stupid. You can’t control things but you can do good.”

I remember I asked him once, “What can you always rely on?”, and for once he didn’t hesitate: “My wife.” You don’t have to get married, he said, but if you marry well it’s the best thing in the world. I’ve thought about that a lot since I got married—he was right again

What prompted this thread was the fact that his wife died this week. I called, and when I reminded him of this, he half laughed and half cried. “God, isn’t that the truth.” He asked about marriage—“It’s not half bad, is it”—and told my wife and I to come visit.

The reason I’m tweeting this is because it reminded me that when I think about who I want to be, I think of these people: caring, wise, and good, in relationships worth mourning, and invested in other peoples’ joy even in their own sadness. God, make me that man.