The Many Worlds of Madison Sowell

            A former colleague recently published a blog post on how she learned to deal with “hard things” by having faith and putting her trust in God.  She concluded by posing the question, “How do you deal with hard things?”  I’ve been pondering how to respond—not so much with religious counsel, but rather with practical advice—ever since reading that question.  I have several friends who are struggling right now with challenging situations.  In thinking about how I have dealt with challenges that are part and parcel of life, I have also reflected on the hundreds of students and fellow sojourners I have interviewed in my various academic and ecclesiastical positions and how they have dealt with hard things.

I have counseled people who have had to deal with the premature death or suicide of a friend or family member; the murder of a relative; verbal, physical, psychological, or sexual abuse; addictions of various types; personal mistakes that have had far-reaching and unanticipated consequences; the loss of a job; expulsion from school; arrest and prison sentences; divorce; chronic ailments or physical limitations present from birth; betrayals of trust; hurtful words or actions by a close friend or family member; loss of faith in God or religion; age-related problems, including early on-set dementia; and psychological or medical issues, ranging from anorexia to paranoia.

What are the hardest things that I have encountered?  When I was a graduate student, I spent time assisting a blind woman.  As a premature baby, she had been given too much oxygen and had lost her sight as a result.  I had a colleague whose spouse was paralyzed because a doctor made a mistake in performing a delicate surgery.  I once had the task of comforting a single-parent mother whose only child foolishly went snowmobiling at 2:00 a.m., hit an elk in the dark, broke his own neck, and died.  Another time I tried to help a young man who was so addicted to drugs that he torched his own car for the insurance money.  When that was used up, he prostituted his body because his craving for drugs was greater than his fear of STDs.  A few years ago I visited a student in prison because he shoplifted for fun (his parents were wealthy) and got caught; I had to tell him that his father told me not to bail him out but to leave him in so that he would “learn his lesson.” While showering in prison, the young man was sexually assaulted by another prisoner.

I have listened to young women who were victims of sexual abuse and assault.  I have dealt with those who were diagnosed as OCD—that is, who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder—and could not sleep at night because they got up a hundred times to check that the front door was locked, that the refrigerator door was shut, or that the light was off in the bathroom.  The lack of sleep led to failure in the classroom. I knew a student-athlete who was so preoccupied with sex (masturbating multiple times a day and doing whatever he could with girls at night) that he lacked self-confidence in his sport and in the classroom, ultimately resulting in bad academic decisions, including plagiarizing someone else’s work in an attempt to pass a challenging class.

Let’s face it: life can be hard, and we all know people who have made their lives even harder by choosing to make unwise choices.  That said, there is admittedly a wide spectrum in the hard things listed above.  Some challenges come unbidden and may be attributed to accidents of birth or the actions of someone else; other challenges are the direct result of the choices we make or have made.  Is it even possible, therefore, that there is one formula—one list of practical things—that cuts across all hard things and helps someone to deal with them in a way that promises relief?  This blog is about my attempt to come up with a handful of practical suggestions that have worked either for me or for others when confronted with hard things or trying times.  In focusing on pragmatic solutions, I do not mean to imply that religious faith, prayer, and scripture study should be neglected. On the contrary, I assume that those are “givens” for most of my friends, colleagues, and students who are reading this blog.

At the top of my list of practical suggestions, I have found that acknowledging and sharing feelings is a healthy and necessary first step.  Acknowledging can be as simple as expressing aloud how you feel:  “I feel hurt, tense, lonely, discouraged, sad, depressed, upset, angry, abused, or distressed.” Without self-awareness progress is almost impossible.  Sharing those feelings with someone else can be an important extension of self-acknowledgment; it often leads to a clearer understanding of why you feel the way you do.  “I feel frustrated because . . . .” The conversation ideally should be with someone you trust (respected friend, counselor, doctor, teacher or church leader). Seeking help is not a sign of weakness; it’s an indication of maturity. Sometimes it takes another person to help us see the difference between something terribly inconvenient and a true catastrophe. Sometimes only a specialist can help us deal with the underlying cause of our feelings. On occasion only medication or a special diet will resolve issues.

Second, prioritizing self-care can result in greater health and happiness.  Self-care may be achieved in different ways: on the one hand, it may mean escaping a toxic environment or avoiding certain situations (at least until you are better prepared to deal with them); on the other hand, it includes eating properly, exercising regularly, engaging in fun or creative activities, getting enough sleep, creating a positive surrounding (for example, with good music and trusted friends), finding uplifting substitute behaviors, and searching for balance.

Third, understanding what you can control and what you cannot control is crucial to recovery.  If we focus on what we can control, it will allow us to make a plan, set goals, and take necessary steps to resolve or ameliorate what’s under our control.  The Serenity prayer has made a huge difference in many lives: “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The courage to change must be based on the understanding that we have our agency and we can change.  We know from psychology how change occurs, whether for ill or good. The cycle producing change is straightforward: “actions” lead to “feelings” that lead to “actions” that lead to “feelings.” On the downward spiral, this means, for example, that “feelings of loneliness” lead to “actions of self-indulgence” that lead to “feelings of self-loathing,” which lead to “actions of self-concealment” that lead back to “feelings of isolation or loneliness.”  To change to the upward cycle, one must first engage either in an action of self-disclosure or in an action of progression. The positive cycle follows the pattern of “actions of self-sharing” lead to “feelings of belonging,” which foster “actions of progression” that lead to “feelings of self-esteem,” which make us much more likely to continue engaging in “actions of self-sharing or self-disclosure.” (See Beck and Beck, Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior, 1990.)

Fourth, learning to forgive and move on is crucial to healing.  If we choose not to forgive and elect instead to focus on anger, frustration, and the unfairness of a hard thing, that is time lost in making progress toward a healthier psyche and peace.  One way of interpreting the part of the Lord’s Prayer that says “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” is “Lord, don’t forgive me one iota more than I’m willing to forgive others.”  Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we approve of the bad actions of another person; it does mean that we’re not going to allow those bad actions to block our progress indefinitely.  We are going to move on and focus on our healing. Forgiveness includes forgiving oneself for mistakes made. (See Sowell, “On Measuring Flour and Forgiveness,” 1996.)

Fifth, expressing gratitude for the blessings we do have helps keep hard things in perspective. Most of the challenges that life throws at us are not permanent.  Remembering what we have to be grateful for and recording those things in a daily gratitude journal can help one take a long-term view and also accelerate the healing process.

Bottom line: Dealing with hard things is by definition challenging.  It is inevitably a process that requires time and patience, grit and determination, planning and goal-setting, and, above all, a willingness to learn from one’s own mistakes. I have found that what helps the most starts with acknowledging and sharing feelings, prioritizing self-care, understanding what can be controlled and what can’t (and taking concrete actions that lead to a change of feelings), learning to forgive and move on, and expressing gratitude and recording blessings.

That’s my response to a colleague’s question.  Now I ask, “How do you deal with hard things?”

“On the Value of a Growth Mindset and Grit” was first published in Voices of Tusculum, ed. Michael Bodary, 4^th ed. (Tusculum University, 2019).

About the author

Dr. Madison U. Sowell penned this essay in response to a question he is often asked:  How does someone born and reared in Piggott, Arkansas, with a population at the time of fewer than 3,000 persons, grow up to earn a master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard University in romance languages and literatures, engage in post-doctoral studies or fellowships at three other Ivy League schools (Columbia, Dartmouth, and Cornell), become an internationally respected specialist in Dante studies and dance iconography, publish eight books and over 130 scholarly articles and book reviews, and become the honors program director at one of America’s largest private universities and then provost (chief academic officer) at two liberal arts colleges?

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I was born and reared in the farming community of Piggott, Arkansas (population 2,776 in 1960). My father, a farmer who never attended college, was killed in an accident when I was eight years old; after his death my widowed mother struggled to run the non-irrigated hill farm and to make ends meet. My first home was a former dance hall that had been converted into a one-bathroom lodging around the time of my birth. It was located two miles out of town in a grove of oak trees. We didn’t have a telephone until I was six years old, and it was on a party line with our rural neighbors. Our well water was ferrous (full or iron), and we collected rain water for washing our clothes. Bantam chickens provided us with eggs, a couple of cows gave us milk in the summer, and we’d  slaughter one for meat during the winter months.

While chores were never lacking, paid employment for a youngster living in the country was hard to come by. One summer I tried to supplement income by chopping cotton for a local farmer for 75 cents an hour, ten hours a day. When I lamented the long hours and low pay, my mother drove me to nearby Mississippi County where I could live with my aunt. The pay there for chopping cotton turned out to be only 40 cents an hour. Another time I bought some piglets, thinking that I could raise them on acorns that fell from our trees and on leftover meal scraps. I planned to sell the mature hogs for a profit, but somehow the pigs got parasites. That blew any financial gain I had hoped to make. I fell back on collecting Coca-Cola and other pop bottles from ditches where drivers had discarded them; I made two cents for every unbroken bottle that I surrendered to a grocery store.

As hard as country life was, life without a father proved even more challenging. I turned inward and became pensive—reading books, practicing our little spinet piano, and climbing trees to escape the life I seemed destined to live. Poetic lines penned by Emily Dickinson, “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away,” gradually began to describe my life of the mind. As a ten-year-old, I read about faraway lands that I ached to visit; I devoured dozens of biographies of great men and women. As a young teenager I read an illustrated article about the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in the Reader’s Digest, which was one of the few magazines we could afford.  I couldn’t have been more than fifteen when I vowed that someday I would be able to say that I had seen all of Vermeer’s thirty-six extant paintings. (I fulfilled that vow before my fortieth birthday, and accomplishing that feat took me to New York, London, Paris, Dresden, Glasgow, Dublin, and Washington, DC.) The irony is that, when I made that promise to myself, I had no clear idea how I would ever see beyond the borders of Clay County, Arkansas.  My two, much-older half-brothers had joined the military to see the world; however, with the Vietnam War starting to rage, I didn’t find that option at all attractive.

Challenging as those early experiences were, they taught me life-changing lessons. For one thing, I realized that the only way to get ahead would be through setting specific goals for myself and then persevering to realize those goals. Studying harder than anyone else became my passion. I wanted to learn how to learn so that I could absorb more knowledge, not only about the world but also about myself. When my report cards showed straight A’s or my test scores placed me in the 99^th percentile of test takers, my mother wisely refused to compliment me on being smarter than anyone else; she would always say that I worked harder. The result was that I was blessed to reach young adulthood with what is now recognized as a “growth mindset,” the belief that one’s abilities are not fixed at birth but can be developed over time through consistent and persistent hard work and diligent and focused effort.

Simply stated, your IQ does not determine who you will become; your innate talent does not determine what you will accomplish. Whatever your natural ability or talent, it is the effort that you put into following your passion that leads to success. In other words, “effort is what ignites [one’s] ability and turns it into accomplishment.”¹ As one of my teachers used to say, “I can’t grade potential, only performance.” What counted was not whether I had potential or not; it was how I performed that mattered.

After I completed the tenth grade, my mother accepted the reality that our farm was costing more money than it produced.  We sold it for about $50 an acre and moved to Memphis, where she could find work as a dental hygienist and I could attend my final two years of high school. So it was that at the start of my junior year we moved into a one-bedroom apartment, and I slept on the couch in the small living room. We still had the spinet piano, but we had to wrap it in blankets to keep my practicing from disturbing the neighbors.

In Arkansas I was used to being the top student in a class of only fifty or sixty kids. In Tennessee I was competing for the first time with students who had enjoyed every advantage that big city life could afford. I was no longer the big fish in a little pond.  I was a little fish in a sea of four hundred fellow classmates, many of whom were planning to attend an Ivy League college or a so-called “Harvard of the South” (e.g., Vanderbilt in Tennessee, Duke in North Carolina, Emory in Georgia, or Tulane in Louisiana). While I could now study Latin and Advanced Placement or accelerated classes in math, history, and English, the competition for the top grade was much keener. Likewise my new piano and organ teacher demanded even more practice time than I was used to. It was time for me to show what I was capable of; it was time for me to draw on my reserve of grit.²

Grit has been defined in many ways. It is associated with words such as courageousness, bravery, pluck, mettle, backbone, spirit, strength of will, steel, nerve, valor, fortitude, toughness, hardiness, resolve, determination, resolution, stamina, doggedness, tenacity, perseverance, and endurance. Grit is informally known as gumption, guts, or spunk. It refers to the inner strength that one displays in getting up after being knocked down, in not allowing a failure or even a series of failures to halt one’s progress toward a goal. While I was not entirely certain of the reason, I knew by the time we moved to Memphis that my objective was to become a highly educated professional. I also knew that grit was going to be the means that helped me realize that dream. Initially I think my motivation to achieve a high degree of education was pecuniary; that is, it was based largely on the desire for financial independence. In time my rationale grew into something much more profound; it evolved into a spiritual quest for greater light, knowledge, and truth.

Given that Tusculum is a faith-based institution, I believe it is appropriate that I share part of the theological underpinning of my drive. My ambition for more education was bolstered theologically after I encountered missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was sixteen, and the missionaries could tell that I was a very serious student. They shared with me their religious belief that “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” and that “if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.”³ Although I had grown up in a solidly Protestant home where the Bible was read and we attended church services every Sunday, I had not until that point in my life viewed education as part of a theological construct. I soon embraced the idea that my Creator wanted me to gain more knowledge and intelligence and to realize my potential, however great or small, so as to bless my life and that of others.

When I graduated from high school, sharing the first-place ranking with other 4.0 students, I was accepted into Brigham Young University’s highly selective Honors Program. Of 6,500 first-year students, only 250 (the top 4%) were admitted to the program. It was like a small liberal arts college in the context of a major research university of 30,000 students. I had the best of two worlds: a liberal arts education taught by outstanding teachers in small sections and access to a major library and other key resources, such as a language laboratory.  I could continue to study Latin but add German and Italian. Once again, I had a steep learning curve because the competition was intense. For example, when as a senior I represented BYU as a Rhodes Scholar candidate, the fellow Honors student who actually won the scholarship was Clayton Christensen. He went on to become the Harvard Business School guru of disruptive innovation. Another fellow BYU Honors student, Tom Kelly, graduated from Harvard Law School and eventually co-founded Jet Blue Airlines.

As an undergraduate I learned that more important than the subjects I studied were the professors who taught the classes, dedicated teachers who could be role models and mentors. I made a list of the university’s most highly respected professors in disciplines that were of interest and made sure I took at least one course from each of them.  It was a mentor, Dr. Karen Lynn, who told me that I was potentially “Harvard material.” Instead of relying on past accolades or achievements, however, I worked all the harder to make sure I didn’t disappoint her.  I sought out opportunities to publish a couple of short pieces; those publications, though minor, strengthened my application for prestigious graduate programs. I saved and found the means to live and work abroad for two years as a missionary myself.  In short, I took advantage of the opportunities that an undergraduate education could afford and worked my hardest to prove that I had the grit to succeed at whatever educational goal I set for myself.

Space does not permit a lengthy commentary on my graduate experience at Harvard.  I will note that, once again, I often felt like a small fish swimming in a large ocean. Initial attempts to write acceptable papers for my professors were disappointing. Renowned teacher-scholars expected more than I had ever before produced. They didn’t want their own thoughts regurgitated; they wanted to see original thought spelled out in detail and defended by solid arguments. They wanted to learn something from me that they didn’t already know. At first I was intimidated not only by the professors but also by fellow graduate students who had gone to prestigious prep schools and then to elite undergraduate colleges. I remember having to swallow my pride and ask a student who received an A on an assignment (for which I had received a lower grade) if I could read his response so as to determine what the professor was looking for when demanding “original thought.” Learning to raise my hand in class when I was the only one who seemed not to understand something and learning to ask for help from others who seemed to understand did not come easily, but such actions were necessary to my success and paid off in the end.  Near the completion of my four years at Harvard, I was the first graduate student in the department’s history to win both of the annual prizes, one for teaching and the other for scholarship.

The trajectory my life has taken, from Piggott farm boy to Tusculum provost, could not have been predicted by my place of birth or family circumstances. It could not have been foreseen by my ACT score. (Fresh off the farm, I was so naïve when I took the ACT that I didn’t realize at first that it was a timed exam.) The predictors for any success that I have enjoyed were three-fold:  a growth mindset (the confidence that I could develop my abilities through focused effort), grit (perseverance in the face of challenges), and a religious conviction that—whether I had one, two, or five talents (see Matthew 25:14-30 for the Parable of the Talents)—God expected me to develop what I had in order to bless as many lives as possible.

¹ See Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine Books, 2016), p. 41.

² See Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (New York: Scribner, 2016): “Grit has two components: passion and perseverance” (p. 56); “Grit is about holding the same top-level [ultimate] goal for a very long time” (p. 64); “[Grit] rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future” (p. 169).

³ See The Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1995), p.183 (D&C 93:36) and p. 265 (D&C 130:19).

ON BECOMING

January 9, 2018

Last night my wife and I hosted twenty or so Southern Virginia University basketball players, their wives, and coaches for dinner in our home.  Afterwards I led a discussion on the relevant New Year topic of “becoming.”  I started by asking everyone to turn to the person next to them and complete this sentence:  “In 2018 I want to become _______.”  Two minutes later I invited those who wished to share with the group what they would like to become during the course of this year:  “I want to become more positive!”  “I want to become more disciplined!”  “I want to become a morning person!”  “I want to become a better disciple!”  “I want to become more organized!”  “I want to become a diligent student!” “I want to become more physically and spiritually fit!”  And so it went.

All of the expressed desires “to become” struck me as wholesome, worthwhile, uplifting resolutions.  Of course the challenge consists in turning those good desires “to become” into a reality.  So I posed my next question:  “How does one become something that one is not?”  In other words, how does one acquire a trait or a skill that one does not already possess?  One of the more mature individuals in the group—in fact, one of the coaches—replied:  “Act as if you already have that attribute and eventually you will gain it.”  For example, if you wish to become more charitable, engage in acts of charity or acts of service towards others, and in time you will attain the attribute of charity; acting charitably will come naturally to you.  Another replied, “well, you have to think often about what it is you wish to become and then act consistently in ways that lead you to become that for which you are aiming.”  If you want to become better at shooting free throws, then you must practice, practice, and practice some more.

One basketball player who enjoys the university’s highest academic scholarship offered, “To become something, one has to set SMART goals and then follow through on them.”  (SMART is the acronym for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.)  He then cited his desire to follow his father’s footsteps and become a medical doctor.  To achieve this long-term goal, he has set specific short-term goals.  This past summer, for example, he shadowed a doctor and also gained his nurse practitioner’s certificate; this semester he is taking organic chemistry and preparing for the MCAT exam.  Step by step, he is working steadily towards becoming what he desires to become.

I then shared some thoughts from Matthews L. Sanders’ insightful book Becoming a Learner (© 2012), including these lines:  “Who you become as a result of your education is the culmination of your everyday actions and efforts.  Over time, as you participate in a variety of activities and take an assortment of courses, you change and grow.  You become a different person.  It is the steadiness of your work ethic, your daily diligence in doing what is expected of you, the manner in which you handle yourself in social situations, the extent to which you think carefully and critically, and your ability to learn new and challenging ideas that will determine who you become” (pp. 7-8, emphasis mine).

What amazed some who were present was Dr. Sanders’ subsequent declaration that “there is no guarantee that you’ll become a learner just by getting a college degree.”  He even affirms, “You can go through college and graduate and actually become worse in terms of your character, intelligence, and personal capacity” (p. 8).  I queried, “How can that be?  How can someone go through four years of college and not become a learner or, even sadder, develop less character, intelligence or capacity?”  The responses came quickly:  “You can just do the bare minimum.”  “You can copy the work of others or find some other way to cheat.”  “You can view the graduation requirements as a mere checklist of things to check off and forget about.”

These answers mirrored Dr. Sanders’ own thoughts:  “Just getting by, working the system, cramming, cheating, procrastinating, avoiding responsibility, making excuses, and doing the least amount of work possible will, over time, result in your becoming lazy, unethical, unable to clearly reason through difficult problems, and unprepared to be excellent at whatever you do” (ibid.).  The thought that a college student could retrogress while taking courses stunned some.

The answer to “how do I become a learner or _____?” is a summation of everything stated above:  “consistently striving for excellence, working to your potential, steadily completing your assignments, working hard, meeting challenges, being prepared, and overcoming mistakes and failures will result in your becoming the kind of person who has the ability to excel in any environment.  When your focus is on who you are becoming, you will recognize that [now] is a time of preparation.  How you take advantage of your time and opportunities determines the kind of person you become” (ibid.).  I challenged everyone to go home and write down what they wish to become, set SMART goals, share those goals with a roommate or spouse, and then keep them in mind and work on them daily.

To inspire the players, I shared a goal that I set after I gained my Ph.D. at age 26 and began teaching college.  It was to become financially independent within ten years (by age 35).  (My starting salary as an assistant professor, by the way, was only $15,500/year.)  By financially independent I meant to have no debt, to own my home and car(s) free and clear.  It meant paying cash for the first car we bought, which was probably less expensive than anyone else’s in the neighborhood.  It meant buying a house with a one-car garage and a low monthly mortgage payment of $176.81. It meant carefully budgeting every dollar we earned.  I knew we could do it because my wife and I had set similarly lofty goals throughout our marriage.  I had graduated debt free from college in three years with a double major and a formal minor because I planned my semesters and my summers with great care.  (My junior year I took 23 credits in the fall semester and 26 in the spring; those semesters were largely planned in 30-minute blocks of time.)  One result of the financial independence I achieved early in my career was my ability to accept a call to serve at age 45 as a full-time mission president without salary for three years.

What was more important relative to my discussion with the basketball players was that we concluded our discussion with a reflection on why it is crucial to become better spiritually.  I referenced a talk given by Dallin H. Oaks entitled “The Challenge to Become.”  (It is available on YouTube.”)  In that discourse the former president of Brigham Young University, where I first knew him, states the following:  “In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to know something, the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to become something.” “The gospel challenges us to be ‘converted,’ which requires us to do and to become.” He concludes:   “We do not obtain our heavenly reward by punching a time clock. What is essential is that our labors in the workplace of the Lord have caused us to become something. For some of us, this requires a longer time than for others. What is important in the end is what we have become by our labors.”

The conclusion I have drawn from last night’s discussion and a lifetime of setting specific goals is that “becoming” is the reason for our time on earth.  We began as embryos and became living infants; we grew through childhood and adolescence to become adults.  But we are not supposed to stop becoming just because we have reached adulthood.  The journey of life continues, and we are expected to progress.  We don’t just need to set SMART goals and follow through on them; we need to keep foremost in our minds the desire to become something better than we currently are.  To accomplish that requires consistent and steady completion of tasks, hard work, learning from mistakes, and going forward with faith that we can change, improve, and ameliorate our human condition.

My goal in 2018 is to become better than I am now by focusing on helping others realize their goals and aspirations, by becoming more altruistic through service to others in terms of their needs.  Today’s blog is my first step in achieving that goal.

WHY I LOVE ITALY

May 12, 2017

            Before my wife and I embark on our next trip to Italy (to the Amalfi Coast and the isle of Capri), I thought I would record for posterity, not to mention my reading public, a few thoughts devoted to the theme “Why I Love Italy.”

My first exposure to the Italian peninsula took place over four decades ago when I was a 17-year-old high school student traveling around Western Europe on a low-budget “Grand Tour” with the Foreign Service League.  The six-week tour, in the company of some 50 teenage students and a dozen chaperones, cost only $916.  It started in London and ended in Rome.  In between we toured Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, Amsterdam and Rotterdam to compare pre- and post-WWII Holland, Normandy (with its unforgettable rows of white crosses at the American Cemetery), Paris and Versailles, Luzern and Bern, and Florence, which still showed evidence of the 1966 flood of the Arno that damaged or destroyed so many art works and killed over one hundred persons.

The trip overflowed with adventure.  In London I met up with my long-time Welsh pen pal Judith and walked with her through colorful Barnaby Street; hippies attired in psychedelic colors and high on marijuana wove in and out of the crowds.  Later, while crossing the Channel from Dover to the mainland, one of our group leaned over the edge of the ferry and a gust of wind blew the passport out of his shirt pocket into the water.  The all-important document was lost forever.  In Amsterdam we learned what “red light district” meant by inadvertently walking through it.  In France one of the female students shrieked during dinner when she found a snail crawling about in her salad; the waitress picked it up, shrugged her shoulders, and exclaimed, “Escargot!”  In Switzerland two of the boys were rough housing in the dorm, and one crashed through a pane glass window; the chaperones were displeased, but all was eventually forgiven.

The biggest adventures, however, transpired in what Dante called “il bel paese” (the beautiful land).  Italy proved to be the highlight of our tour for several reasons, including the incredible juxtaposition of the ancient with the baroque, the stately neoclassical with the chaotic modern.  In Rome we stayed in a convent run by non-English-speaking nuns, and we took a daily tram into the heart of the city.  We trudged in the heat around the Coliseum and through the Roman forum; we gaped with open mouths at the oculus at the top of the Pantheon and Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the dome of St. Peter’s.  One night, on the stage set in the Baths of Caracalla, I witnessed my first live opera performance:  Verdi’s Aida, with a live elephant walking across the stage.  A trip to Pompeii proved another highlight when, with the help of my high school Latin, I was able to decipher some of the ancient signs, such as “Cave Canem.”  (It helped that a mosaic of a ferocious-looking dog accompanied that particular warning.)  I also learned what ithyphallic art was when our guide requested that only the boys could see certain antique works, which he then delighted in showing us.  I was receiving an education that was surprising and perhaps more than I initially had bargained for.  What did not surprise me was that the food was glorious; I couldn’t seem to get enough of the pasta, pizza, and gelato.

Notwithstanding the glory that was Rome the city and Italy that was the geographical place, it was the Italian people who perhaps fascinated me the most.  They were intriguing; they seemed to find joy in every aspect of life. The first Italian we met was our bus driver, who spent a month driving us across Europe to Rome.  He was quite voluble in his native tongue.  Even though we couldn’t understand the individual words in his perorations against other drivers, we always recognized his displeasure through his virtuoso manipulation of the bus’s very loud horn and his dramatic hand gestures.  Once we arrived in his native land, he fairly glowed with pride and satisfaction.  By the time we settled into our convent abode, we teenagers had gained enough confidence that small groups of students were allowed to explore on their own.  I remember taking off to see Michelangelo’s Moses.  An elderly Italian gentleman approached me in the church and asked in broken English if I would like a personalized tour.  I said yes, and he spoke with pride as he pointed out the various art works that surrounded us.

Needless to say, after returning home from such a mind-expanding experience, I decided that I needed to learn much more about Italy and the Italian people.  I continued my study of Latin in high school and college and eventually, after reading Dante as a first-year college student, and then serving an Italian-speaking mission for two years, I formally studied not only the Italian language but also its rich literature and culture.  Italy became my life’s passion and my life’s work.  While I delight in accompanying students, friends, and family members back to the homeland of Virgil, Dante, Raphael, and Michelangelo,  to see and study its history, literature, and art treasures, I have come to realize that without the Italians, my love for the country would long ago have waned.  There is something about the Italians’ joy of living, their abiding appreciation for and loquacious commentary on every aspect of existence, from politics to soccer and from religion to art, from food to clothes, that I find exhilarating.  I love Italy in largest part because I love the Italian people.  My Italian friends have become my extended family.

ON BIRTHDAYS AND NAME DAYS

            Nomina sunt consequential rerum is a favorite dictum of the medieval Italian poet Dante, whose words have been the focus of much of my scholarly life.  The Latin phrase translates into English as “Names are the consequences of things.”  The thought runs this way:  “If people naturally call a woman Maria, then it must be because she is pure like the Virginia Mary; if a Hispanic lad is called Jesus, he will grow up to be like the Lord.”  The saying stresses the intimate connection between names and who one really is.

Since today (March 8^th) is my birthday, I’ve been reflecting all day about when I was born and why I was given the name I was given.  At the time it was a virile, stately, and rugged name for a boy baby.  It recalled the name of President James Madison and Madison Square Garden, where boxing matches were held every Saturday night and broadcast across the country.  Now, ever since the movie Splash came out and the blonde mermaid chose “Madison” as her name, it has proven a much more popular name for girl babies.  Fortunately I’m mature enough not to experience a gender identity crisis every time I encounter a post-Splash young woman named Madison, but I must admit it’s still a bit disconcerting to see someone wearing a skirt and responding to my name at the same time….

Most Americans celebrate their birthday each year with lots of hoopla, including cards that sing songs and gag gifts such as one I received this week.  It was a book entitled The Joys of Getting Older by Thomas and Cindy Senior.  When I opened the $4.99 paperback, I found that all the pages were blank.  (It took a second for the gray cells to connect, but I got the joke—including the pseudonym of the authors.)  In any event, birthday celebrations in this country are done in a variety of ways but usually with family and friends, parties and games, cake and ice cream.  What is more important, the celebration transpires on the day that marks the anniversary of one’s birth.  Often little time is left for quiet meditation.

In Catholic countries such as Italy, however, the traditional day of annual celebration falls (or used to fall) on one’s onomastico—on the day associated with one’s personal saint or the saint for whom one was named.  For example, if my given name were Patrizio (Patrick), everyone would know that my onomastic celebration would be on March 17^th, which is St. Patrick’s Day.  Traditional calendars listed the name of a male or female saint on each day of the year; therefore, one did not need to ask when anyone’s annual celebration would take place.  If your friend’s name was Giovanni Battista, it would be on the day celebrating the nativity of John the Baptist (June 24, six months before Christmas).  The rise of American culture in Italy (spread following World War II through films) and the country’s increasing secularism, marching in lockstep with the decline of Catholic influence, has led to a shift in this wonderful Italian tradition.  Today there is a preference for celebrating one’s birth day rather than one’s onomastic day.  Nevertheless the notion of using one day a year to reflect on one’s name and the significance of the life represented by that name continues with many families.  Often a prayer would be offered to one’s name saint.

As one in love with Italian culture, I reflect each year on my birthday not only on the events of the previous year (its highs and lows, successes and failures, family births and deaths, goals achieved and not) but also on the arc of my life to date.  When the year in question is one of the so-called “significant birthdays” (e.g., 25^th, 30^th, 35^th, 40^th, 50^th, etc.), I focus on the previous five-year or ten-year period in comparison to earlier lustrums or decades.  I also think about my father, whose name was also Madison and who waited until he was 65 years old to produce his one and only son.  Yes, you read that right.  It’s not a typo.  My father was in his sixty-sixth year when I was born.  His own father, who chose the name Madison because it was his father-in-law’s name, was born prior to the start of the Civil War or, as they call it in Lexington, the War of Northern Aggression.  My name has a very l-o-n-g and venerable family tradition.

So what I do I think about on this particular birth-day?  I am grateful, first of all, that I’m not about to become a father at age 65 (as did my own father) but that I have three adorable grandchildren to watch over, one of whom carries on my family name as his middle name.  Second, I am thankful that I chose to become a teacher, one who gets to discuss with students why “names are the consequences of things” has dramatic implications for the rest of a child’s life.  (Just think of the lyric from the Billy Cash song A Boy Named Sue:  “I tell ya, life ain’t easy for a boy named ‘Sue’”!)  Third, I relish the fact that I was reared on or close to a farm and that I learned to work hard for anything I wanted, including an education.  Chopping cotton for 75 cents an hour surely was not fun at the time, but it makes for some great stories a few decades after the fact about the value of perseverance.  Finally, I’m glad that the filters or lenses through which I see myself reach far beyond that of any one name or epithet or adjective.  I have come to the realization that we can greatly influence our outlook by the handles we choose to apply to ourselves:  son or daughter, father or mother, brother or sister, religious or irreligious, angry or contented, happy or sad, peacemaker or war monger, transparent or opaque, candid or insincere, positive or negative, and so on.

For the truth is this: each one of us chooses, psychologically and emotionally, the lenses through which we view ourselves.  We brand ourselves by the words we adopt to describe who we are, whether expressed aloud or kept locked away in our minds.  On this birthday I’ve come to the conclusion that just as “names are the consequences of things,” so “things [how we view our core selves] are the consequences of names [that we assign to ourselves].”  That’s why we all are touched when the “colored maid” in Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help tells the little white girl to remember, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”  We are moved to tears because we know, deep down, that words (and names) matter, especially those we assign to (or elect to accept for) ourselves.