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But it is the students who have kept the desire for knowledge—and yes, even wisdom—a youthful fire still burning in this gray head and ageing heart. But knowledge and wisdom, along with humility and gratitude, are elusive company. Every new day brings a new challenge to the things I thought (maybe even knew) I knew. An innocent (or not so innocent) question posed by a student destabilizes my equanimity. I sometimes (now only rarely, but no less shamefully) grasp for straws, quickly amass a handful, and throw them in the air to screen my discomfort. Then I retire to my den of books, scores, and computers to brood. I seem unable to accept that the intellectual landscape I have constructed (all the while supposedly aware of its ephemerality—after all, how could a critical theorist think otherwise) is so easily shaken by a naïve (or intelligent) question.
It is the students and the teaching of them that got me. They are the exam before the lesson. And the lesson? Humility. The trick? To keep it.