“The best thing for disturbances of the spirit,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your moneys to a monster, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn.”
T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone (1938)
As we begin a new academic year, I can’t help thinking of Merlyn’s advice for depressed spirits, – to learn, to apply the mind to some subject and so expand our world. Feeling down can make us feel small, disconnected and lonely. Learning (whether bookish or practical) takes us out of ourselves and into something larger, connects us with history, with others, with the world and can help us widen our perspective.
And what of poor students forced to learn about subjects in which they have no interest? Then the best thing is to apply the attention. Winifred Gallagher makes the case that anything can be interesting if we only fully apply our attention. In her book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, Gallagher talks about attention as an investment that we make and as a key influencer of our experience. If you’re paying attention to how much you dislike calculus/geography/whatever, your experience is dissatisfaction, boredom, irritation, doubt – it’s broadly negative. If you can bring an attitude of non-judgement and openness, if you can bring beginner’s mind to the topic you might just have a completely different experience. If nothing else, by paying attention, you’ll get your work done sooner.
We can interpret Merlyn’s recommendation for learning another way too, and that is the getting-to-know yourself kind of learning. This work is never done, and any difficult spell teaches us more about ourselves often than we care to know. There’s nothing for it then but to muster the spirit of friendliness towards ourselves and to learn and grow.
