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In Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s teacher (Mr. Antolini) gives an account of education that both resonates with my experience and illustrates my intention in sharing these Life Streams…

The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with.  So they gave up looking. They gave up before they even got started.”…”I don’t want to scare you,” he said, “but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause.

… ” ‘The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.’

…”you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.  You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know.  Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them–if you want to.  Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.  It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.  And it isn’t education.  It’s history.  It’s poetry.”

…”educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with–which, unfortunately, is rarely the case–tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative.  They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end.”

…”Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have.  What it’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t.  After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you.  You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”

Note:  The text above is taken from Goodreads and has been reformatted and edited just a tad.  The quotations are somewhat broken up and I haven’t checked them, yet, against the book, but all this sounds very much as I remember it.

–> Period Pieces