Friday, May 3, 2013

Romney, Shallow Waters, and Big Fish

I recently heard the Commencement speech that Mitt Romney gave to the graduates of Southern Virginia University, titled "Launch Out in to the Deep" which is based on counsel that Jesus gave to his apostles. As the story goes, his apostles had been out fishing and they had not caught any fish. Upon seeing them, Jesus told them "launch out in to the deep and cast your nets" which they did and came back with a bumper haul of fish. The speech itself was not particularly impressive and the counsel was typical of commencement addresses. Still, the title intrigued me.

Too often, as Romeny reminded the graduates, we spend most of our lives in "shallow waters" hoping to make the "big catch" in a place where big fish rarely swim. And I know that as liberals too often we are ready to point out that the reason we stay in shallow waters is because we have no boats, no nets, and the rich guy on the shore probably owns the sea and doesn't allow us to fish without extracting a lot of money. But putting aside these probabilities, it is good to remind ourselves how often we retreat from deep (and troubled) waters when we should go forward.

In Puerto Rico there was the legend of the "Dutchmen"--developed during a time when dutch pirates roamed the Caribbean--and according to some this  made Puerto Ricans insurales, individuals afraid to venture out, thus insulating them from the rest of the world. Puerto Rican intellectuals like Juan Flores have debunk much of this theory and have shown how other factors kept Puerto Ricans isolated from the larger world. Nonetheless, there is some truth to the myth--if the details themselves are not. And in some ways, many of us are insulados or isolated within our own worlds.

Being afraid to launch into deep waters is a common fear. And no matter how far we go out into the ocean of our lives and our professions there is always still a vast ocean and each mile further out brings its own fears. Over time, every piece of ocean we navigate becomes "shallow" simply because we are so familiar with it and we have mostly conquered all that lies within. And the catches become smaller.

In an upcoming movie, a father tells his son that there is no such thing as fear but rather it is only a human reaction to real dangers that lurk out in the world. Now, as a guy with lots of fears it is hard to swallow that idea but yet I believe that it is mostlyy true. So often what we fear is the unknown, or the situation which takes the control remote out of our hands. We like to line up our ducks and make sure that all loose ends are tied and that whatever endeavor we engage in will be a success. Of course, we can be the other extreme in which we plan for nothing and find ourselves unprepared, thus unwilling, to venture out in the deep. And in that case, it is probably best if we do not.

Launching out into the deep is simply about stretching ourselves, developing new skills or enhancing our old ones, meeting new people or re-engaging with old friends, and testing ourselves in unfamiliar places. Not all the" deep-sea" explorations result in magnificent catches or discovered treasures. Sometimes they are simply ways of knowing that some dreams are not really what we thought they were, nor worth pursuing. In those moments of disappointment we sometimes develop new perspectives and thus new goals.

Romney also said something interesting, and that is that we should give our jobs "our best but not our all" because our all should be reserved for God. Paraphrasing that in secular terms we can say that "we should give our best to our work but reserve our all for our vocation" which forms the larger views and passions that we had when we began doing what we love to do. Too often we give our all to the "process of our lives, instead of to its essence". I write for reasons beyond getting published, getting promoted or finding some kind of fame or notoriety. Sometimes, when seating in front of the department chair for what we call at BYU "stewardship meetings" I struggle with the bean counting discussion of articles and books and "achievements" because for me those rarely deal with my commitment to students, the profession and the larger community.

A good part, if not all, of my books have been found in the deep waters of history, and recovered from the divers places of history. Someone once asked me where I get all my ideas for my books. My response was "from living life and being aware of what is missing" in the story of people like me. This underscores for me that the "deep waters" are actually all around us. They are personal crevices that we should seek to fill at one time or another if we are to live a full life. And to catch the "big" fish, of course.