Conversation on Character
May 3rd, 2008Yesterday at an end-of-the-year party, a Russian literature Professor and I were having a talk about a variety of subjects. She asked me how much longer I had to graduate and I said, “A few years.” She said, “Really? What year are you?” and I said, “First year.” That caused her to literally do a double-take, and when she recovered her jaw from the floor she said, “No way.” This isn’t all that unusual: people who meet me typically think I’m a few years older than I am because, as the Professor put it, I “do not have the composure of a first-year.” I’d like to think it’s because I’m too busy to shave more than once a week, but others will form their perceptions as they will.
As our conversation went deeper, I told her at one point that my ambition is to be a politician. I wish I had the words to describe the look on her face. I told her not to lose all her respect for me at once — “I can see your respect for me leaving you, Dr.” She said I was too good and smart a person to want to be a politician. This isn’t the first time I’ve ever heard that, either. But it always makes my heart sing to know that someone thinks highly of me. I sent her an email last night asking if she’d prefer me to word the sentence “I want to be a politician” as “I want to be a statesman.” She answered that this was preferable as “the crookedness and conniving of many politicians seems antithetical to your character.”
I went for a workout today. It’s the first time I’ve formally lifted weights since last spring, but I felt and feel good. I think it’s time I tone up again, and I was inspired to do so when my best friend took me rock-climbing a few weeks ago and I was able to climb it but not without much fatigue. I bring that up because yesterday was also his end-of-the-year mathematician party, and I felt a great sadness when I said goodbye to Louis Kauffman for a month as he travels to Europe. Fortunately he’ll be back in late June when my best friend defends his masters thesis, but I will miss him and told him so. Despite all the premature sadness, it was a hilarious farewell. I came into his office to find my best friend sitting alone. So, I sat down at the desk I always sit down at and set Lou’s umbrella up to cover any view of me. When he entered the room, he said, “Ah! Mr. Pratt! Are you under the weather?”
It wasn’t as good as a few weeks ago when he was focusing exclusively on a math problem and I walked into the office, sat down and began reading Edward Teller’s Conversations on the Dark Side of Physics until Lou Kauffman looked up and said, “It appears that Mr. Pratt has snuck in.” D.C. told me that Lou’s surprise was worth a thousand words.
Unlike most students, I am not happy that the semester is (almost) over. I’ll be thrilled when the examinations are done with, because I think examinations are generally unhelpful, but I will miss school. It’s a good thing I am as independently motivated as I am and have a million projects in my back pocket. Several weeks ago, my friend Jonathan referred to me as “hard-working” and while I am “hard-working” and have always been “hard-working,” it was the first time someone had ever referred to me as “hard-working.” It’s strange, but in a lot of ways I feel as if all the recognition and respect I crave for, all the positive thoughts I’ve always had about myself, are being shared by other people. I don’t know if people have always seen me these ways or if they’re just starting to notice, but I appreciate kind words.
One of the best things someone has said to me in a long time was in Los Angeles, on my “vacation,” where a man asked me how I could afford to travel across the country for three days, just because I felt like it. I said, “I flew Southwest. And really, I have money saved up here and there, so when the opportunity to visit someone and someplace was extended to me, I took it. I take my opportunities. And I needed a good break. I’ve been overworked and….. –” My friend’s friend interjected: “–under-loved?” and she gave me a hilarious eyebrow raise.
There was a time when this wouldn’t have been funny to me, of course, and I wouldn’t have been free to travel to Kentucky or Indiana or Tennessee, let alone California. I was certainly under-loved and under-appreciated in high school and over-protected in high school, but that’s changed drastically and the quality of my life has been outstanding lately. Since last summer, I can count maybe five “bad days.” Nothing’s perfect, of course. Nobody’s perfect. But I feel like I am a member of a community for the first time in my life, and while this isn’t a conclusion I arrived at today it is one that I didn’t begin to articulate until recently.
I’ve been writing this on my laptop as I wait for it to be closer to noon so that I can go into my work offices and edit like a good censor extraordinaire. I don’t know if that’s a glimpse into my character character character! or not, but there you go, Dear Reader. I’ll be back to blogging about politics later tonight or tomorrow, depending on whether or not I go out this evening or have people over.