Read, Write, Grow, Try: Tips for Nurturing Fascination

[The following is a brief excerpt from a talk given to a parent organization at Trinity Academy. These are speaker notes, so pardon the dearth of paragraphs]

I like to think of fascination as the soul’s disciplined pursuit of understanding.

I also like to think of classical education as a model that instills life-long fascination in students.

So, how do we nurture students in such a way that they are fascinated with everything from Shakespeare to spark plugs?

I'll begin with a quote from Victor Hugo’s book, Les Misérables. One of my favorite characters in the book is the Bishop, Monsieur Bienvenu (he’s the one who forgives Jean Valjean for stealing his stuff).

When Hugo wants to show what kind of man the priest Bienvenu is, he shows him to be a man whose contentment springs from his fascination with simple things:

Here he is in his garden:

“What more could he need, this old man whose little leisure was divided between day-time gardening and night-time contemplation? Was not that narrow space with the sky its ceiling room enough for the worship of God in the most delicate of his works and in the most sublime? A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in -what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”

When I think of the kind of spirit I want to have, and the kind of peace and contentment I want my children -- all children -- and all of us to have, I regularly think of Hugo's beautiful image of a man who loves God, who also knows how to reflect and to contemplate infinite smallness and infinite greatness in the world around him. He was fascinating because he was fascinated.

In addition to French novelists, poets also tend to be fascinated as a matter of principle, as Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds me in “Pied Beauty”:

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

So, how do we add hands and feet to fascination? In other words, how do we turn an emotion into actions that we can plan, with the hope that they yield a fascinated mind. We can treat fascination as a disciplined activity that will eventually become a habit of the heart.

Without disciplined action, we feel:

Bored.

Disinterested.

Unmoved.

Repelled.

Left unattended, these emotions produce people who are:

Boring.

Uninteresting.

Uninspiring.

Repellant.

On the flip side, people who excel in the virtue of fascination tend to be:

Good friends

Good guests in a person’s home

Good students

Good dinner partners

Good candidates for a job

So, how can we give form to this shapeless thing called fascination? Perhaps a benign formula. Not too strict, not too loose:

Read.

Write.

Grow.

Try.

First, read something.

1) Classic Fiction

a. Develops empathy

b. Develops emotional intelligence

What got me started? A Book of Quotes and Jeopardy!

Lots of short books.

2) Affinities

a. Depth in a few areas

b. Helps to find “your people”

3) Read to "fill the void":

a. Boldly proclaim ignorance and enjoy remembering what it’s like to

be a novice at something.

Second, write something.

Here I kindly suggest a return to the hand-written essay. Handwritten, like, in a Moleskin. (See: David Sax’s The Revenge of Analog. “The Revenge of Paper.”)

Why handwritten?

Writing by hand slows us down and elongates awareness. The resulting image of words on a page is not standardized. Handwriting promotes ownership of what we have written.

Ideas for kids:

1) Write down what they want to do this weekend, and why. The most compelling plea wins.

2) Write down why you want something. A new book, a new game, a new rc plane, a dirt bike. Tell me why and make it good.

3) Birthdays: Don’t give me a card, son. Write a paragraph about a memory you have with me. There is no greater birthday present for Dad.

4) Become a writer of eloquent, poignant thank-you notes that focus more on the recipient of the note than the writer.

Third, grow something.

A garden

A collection

A library

A skill

A network

A business

Growing something teaches children/us not just to like something, but to curate something. To tend it, to keep it, to share it.

Fourth, try something.

For Christmas and birthday every year, give children something new to try. A tool, a game, a new food.

Over time, as the discipline grows, so will their capacity for fascination. They might never stand in a French garden like Bienvenu. But they will develop a frame of mind that asks,

“What more could I need? I have the earth beneath me and above me, the stars.”