Of course, I need not tell you that professors are human, too. What I want to draw attention to, however, is one aspect of that humanity, namely the tendency to become bitter. What might occasion bitterness on a professor’s part? The answer is quite simple: The failure to achieve the academic heights dreamed about in graduate school. Anyone professor who attended a high-powered graduate program dreamed of one day becoming one of the major trend-setters in her or his field: the subject of untold dissertations, journal articles, and even the chapters of books.
The academic world is an exceedingly competitive one, however; and most graduate students—even from high-powered graduate program—never go on to become one of the trend-setters in their field—a superstar in the field, as we say. And it is this reality that is very fertile soil for the growth of bitterness on the part of professors.
Rather than accepting the fact that she or he will not become a major trend-setter in her or his field, the professor aches over the fact and starts blaming one thing or person and then another. Worse, the professor may even fail to acknowledge that things are nonetheless going rather well in her or his career, although she or he is not a trend-setter. After all, the choice is not to be a superstar or nothing at all.
Imagine, for example, someone—call him John—owning an Audi but wanting a Mercedes so badly that he does not appreciate the fact that he has an Audi which, after all, is a quite decent car. Indeed, it not just that John is unhappy with his Audi, but it also the case that he looks down on anyone else who owns an Audi.
Professors who become bitter owing to the failure to realize their dream of being a trend-setter, a superstar in their field, are rather like John the Audi owner whom I have just described.
Bitterness is crippling because it invariably gives rise to a failure to use the gifts that one does have in a more effective manner. This is because one is too busy bemoaning the fact that one is not a superstar in one’s field to do that. Indeed, the bitter person would rather hold on to anger than let it go in order to achieve a greater good. Bitterness, then, becomes its own security blanket—an every ready justification for not seeing something in a more positive light.
To state the obvious: Bitterness is to life what rust is to metal, in that both are absolutely corrosive. Rust destroys a metal’s tensile strength; whereas bitterness is an ever present impediment to the will to do that which is good. Thus, a bitter person can be suspicious of pristine innocence itself.
As I reflect upon the university, it has occurred to me (perhaps as an epiphany of sorts) that the classroom has become a conduit for bitterness on the part of many professors who did not become the superstar that, in graduate, they had imagined that they would become.
Strikingly, bitter folks have an inexorability to them that has nothing much to do with producing anything good, but simply with exercising power over others. Notice, for instance, that it is one thing for a professor to demand respect from her or his students even as the professor is very respect of the students in return. By contrast, it is quite another for a professor to demand of her or his students that they accept her or his views. At any rate, the students had better do so if they are to have any hope of getting a high grade in the professor’s class.
The kind of inexorableness that I have just described is exhibited by professors with respect to some of the most controversial issues that one might imagine: affirmative action and abortion, to take two obvious candidates here. How can any professor think that the only correct view regarding either issue is the one that she or he holds?
Students never think of themselves as being the object of a professor’s bitterness in the classroom. But expressions of bitterness masquerading as dispensing the unexpurgated truth is one of the ways in which bitter professors compensate for not being the professional superstar that they had hoped to become. After all, in the classroom the professor has something of the status of a god in terms of the exercise of power over a grade.
Now, lest there be any misunderstanding, I do not think for a moment that bitterness is easy to avoid. Not becoming bitter is certainly not at all like choosing to shop at one supermarket rather than another. Indeed, not becoming bitter can be an extremely difficult thing to do precisely because the wounds of disappointment grow deep. What is more, it also the case that with age the hope of making a name for oneself grows increasingly dim.
But an insight that I continually point out to people is that no one has everything. Likewise, no one does everything. With rare exception, we always have it within our power to do something that is profoundly affirming. It may very well not be what we initially wanted to do. That, however, is a different matter entirely.
Interestingly, the bitter person more or less says that if I cannot have the kind of affirmation that I had dreamed of obtaining, then I will pretty much not be content with any other form of affirmation. By contrast, the person who escapes bitterness notwithstanding great disappointment is he or she who readily turns to alternative forms of affirmation.
The ability to find alternative forms of affirmation in the face of deep disappointments—nay, failures—is pretty much the key to not becoming a bitter person. Here, then, is an analysis of the metaphor of deciding whether to see the glass as half-empty or half-full. If life is that glass, then we can either dwell eternally upon the fact that we did not get to realize one dream that would provided deep and abiding affirmation or, alternatively, we can notice that there are other marvelous ways of obtaining deep and abiding forms affirmation.
Life did not serve up but one way to find deep and abiding affirmation. It is we who make the mistake of insisting that it is either one way or no way. Thus, the bitter person short changes herself or himself. Nay, the bitter person destroys or ignores the various alternative bridges available to her or him with regarding to obtaining deep and abiding affirmation simply because these alternative bridges were not part of the original plan of travel.
The gift of living well is inextricably tied to choosing well. And choosing well consists in being mindful of the forms of marvelous and genuine affirmation that life serves us.
As with a buffet, sometimes we get what we initially set our sights upon. Then sometimes we have to turn to an alternate dish. The alternative may never serve as a complete substitute for what we really wanted. Yet, it may be incredibly good nonetheless and, in any case, turning to it is vastly superior to not eating at all.
The bitter are those who hold that they can enjoy a good meal only if what they eat is what they had set their sights upon at the outset. The non-bitter, by contrast, can appreciate that they had a very good meal and indeed savour it notwithstanding the fact that what they actually ate is not what they had initially hoped to eat.
On this way of viewing things, not being bitter is a moral gift that we can give to ourselves if only we should choose to do so. Alas, the bitter person is too busy being bitter to see this simple but ever so sublime truth.
