Four Things to Remember

My past several reading weeks have been spent, for the most part, with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the homicide division of the Sûreté du Québec, Québec’s provincial police force. He’s just about my age (maybe four or five years younger), loves solving puzzles, poetry, good food, his wife, and the many inspectors and police officers who work for him. I wish I had met Armand before I spent four years directing a large academic program, since I could have learned a lot from him about how to lead people who don’t always think they need direction. I have only known Armand for a couple of months—the amount of time it took me to read the first ten volumes in Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache mystery series, set in Three Pines, Québec, just a few dozen miles away from where I grew up in northern Vermont.

Gamache takes his position as a mentor for younger and less experienced officers very seriously, often imparting wisdom in a deliberate manner more appropriate to a professor than to a policeman. Penny takes her time filling us in on the back stories of her twenty or so repeating characters—Gamache is no exception. In one of the early books we learn of some unsolicited but crucially important advice that he received in almost mythic fashion from an old fisherman in a northern Québec diner early in his career. Each of Gamache’s protégé’s in turn have received this advice—four statements that every aspiring inspector should take to heart. “Get used to saying each of these on a regular basis and meaning it,” the old fisherman said.

I don’t know

I was wrong

I’m sorry

I need help

I suspect that the old fisherman’s advice is applicable to more than inspectors.

I Don’t Know. Many people believe that college professors think they know everything. I’m here to tell you that there are a few who actually would be surprised to discover that they don’t know everything. But for the most part, the academic life is one guaranteed to let you know on a daily basis just how much you don’t know. Twenty years ago, as a new, untenured assistant professor, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio. The format was to begin with two twenty-minute papers—one by a theologian, one by a philosopher—then a discussion of the papers by a panel of four colleagues (two each from philosophy and theology). I got to do the lead twenty-minute philosophy paper. I was mildly (I thought) critical of some aspects of the encyclical, something that did not fly with many of those present, particularly the dozens of parishioners from the Catholic church across the street who were in attendance.

During the question and answer period after the panel discussion, a guy in the front row directed the first question to me. “Dr. Morgan,” the fellow asked, “is there no room in philosophy for humility?” I responded to his question in a way I never had before and never have since—I laughed. “Yes, sir, there is plenty of room for humility in philosophy,” I answered. “The longer I do this, the more I realize on a daily basis how much I don’t know.” For more than twenty-five years, my primary goal in the classroom has been to help my students realize that certainty is highly overrated and that lifetime learning demands a consistent awareness that no one knows everything (or even that much). As Hamlet told his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

I Was Wrong. For someone whose father, like the Fonz from Happy Days, could hardly even pronounce the worlds “I was wrong,” I do okay with this one. I had great fun when my sons were little trying to convince them that I am always right. This, of course, set them on a quest to catch me being wrong about something—I managed to sustain the illusion of God-like rectitude for a few weeks, but only by practicing my obfuscation and logic-bending skills on a regular basis. I wasn’t that good at it—I have some colleagues in my department who are still convinced of their infallibility in their fifties and sixties, in the face of regular and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Makes for interesting department meetings.

I’m Sorry.  I’m not sure how someone who can’t say “I’m sorry” without having a nervous breakdown can survive a marriage, parenthood, the workplace, friendships, a trip to the supermarket, or getting out of bed in the morning.

I Need Help. My dachshund Frieda, who is about fifteen inches long, has slept with Jeanne and me in bed every night we have been home for the past ten years. The going-to-bed routine is always the same. Frieda does not want to simply be picked up and deposited on the queen-sized bed that she cannot jump on herself. She first stands on her hind legs leaning against the bed hopping on her hind feet (each jump clears the floor by about one inch). She wants to do it herself. When a human grabs her around her portly middle to lift her up, she makes one final great leap to assist the transfer. I’m sure Frieda is convinced that given enough time she could complete the impossible task of getting into bed by herself. She got that from me.

When I mentioned to Jeanne the topic of this essay (she has also read all of Penny’s Gamache series), I asked her which of the four statements she has the most trouble with. After a bit of thought, she told me; before she could say anything more, I said “my problem statement is ‘I need help.” “Obviously,” she replied. “I deal with your wanting to do everything yourself on a daily basis.” And she does. My general commitment to doing things by myself is not principled in the sense that I go around saying “If you want to get something done right, do it yourself” all the time. I’m not even a big fan of the American individualist stereotype. But somewhere early on, probably from my mother, I developed the habit of accomplishing as many tasks as possible by myself, rather than inviting others to work on the tasks with me.

For this reason, I hated group projects as a student, which is probably why I—in contrast to many of my professor colleagues—assign very few group projects as a teacher. I never wanted to put my grade for any assignment at risk by turning a portion of it over to some random hoi polloi member of my group. The idea of co-writing an article or book is about as attractive to me as root canal without anesthesia. This resistance to admitting that I can’t do everything myself influenced my day-to-day activities directing a large academic program for four years as well. Several weeks ago I ran into the secretary of the academic program and asked her how things were going with the new director. “Oh, things are fine” she said—“but I had no idea how much you did by yourself when you were director.” Apparently the new director is delegating portions of regular tasks such as scheduling and event planning, tasks that I did by myself when I was director, to the program secretary. Wish I had thought of that.

Incomplete knowledge, imperfect behavior, and a frequent need for the support of others—sounds like a human being to me. Remembering the Chief Inspector’s four statements might help remind us that, above all else, we are human.