Why I'm In English

Occasionally a student asks me why I'm in English.  There are multiple good responses, viz:  the ability to read carefully, write clearly, and think critically are necessary skills in almost every profession; fiction stimulates the imagination and therefore can foster creativity and innovation; literature exercises the Werneke's area (the region of the brain responsible for textual comprehension), which expands the mind; to go the Orwell route, beautiful language, large vocabularies, and complex ideas are politically subversive, and therefore literature is indicative of a free society; and sometimes, quite simply, you don't pick your major, your major picks you.

But while I sincerely believe in and subscribe to all the above, there's an even more basic reason why. Let me explain.

Once, while an undergrad, I took an Autumn off to teach English in China.  Wonderful, mind-altering experience, I loved it.  I brought 2 books with me: my scriptures, and the unabridged Don Quixote.  The latter is a solid 1,000+ pages, which I figured would be enough to last my entire stay.

I finished it in 6 weeks.

At first, this wasn't a big deal, for I was still reading my scriptures daily and dutifully, and besides, I was busy exploring China!

But then, around December, something odd happened; in retrospect, I think I had the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (about as accurate an acronym as there ever was), though I'd never had SAD before.  I felt disconnected, isolated, cut-off from everything and everyone around me.  I was inexplicably sad, depressed, empty, for no apparent good reason (China was as interesting and the people as hospitable as they ever were).  I acted happy in front of others, but it was just that, an act, and it bothered me that I even had to act.  I resented this depression, which was really cramping my Chinese experience.

It's times like these that really reveal how idiotic, trite, and nonsensical are all those admonitions to "choose to be happy!"  That's like telling a cancer patient to choose to be healthy, or an armless person to punch your arms till they grow back.  There is just something missing.

As near as I can tell, all that was missing was I didn't have a book to read.

My mood improved slightly upon my return to America for Christmas, but only slightly; and as I drove back to Rexburg, I couldn't shake the feeling that the whole world felt like a prison to me.  It wasn't just China.  It was giving me the heebie-jeebies, truth be told.

Now, Rexburg in the dead of winter will hardly improve anyone's SAD, but the heavy course-load and constant reading of my senior year at least distracted my mind for the time being. 

Then I read 2 books that changed my life.

One day, my Spanish professor, out of the blue, recommended me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book I hadn't even heard of till that morning.  Less than 2 hours later, a classmate in an English class, again apropos of nothing, made the same recommendation.  Taking these two disconnected suggestions as a sign, I checked Zen out.  I meant to fit it in during downtime at work, perhaps over the course of a month.

I finished it in less than a week.  I'd never encountered a page-turner like it.

Later that Spring, I was assigned Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for an English class.  My mind still hasn't recovered from the shock: I didn't know you could write like that!  Somehow the one-two punch of Zen and Portrait shook me from my doldrums, woke me up, opened my eyes to the stunning beauty of the universe, reconnected me to everything and everyone, enlarged my mind and expanded my soul.

Since then, I haven't chanced it: I read high literature constantly.  Non-stop.  One after another.  I haven't had SAD since.  It's been cheaper and more effective than drugs and therapy.  Literature for me is not a luxury but a necessity.  English, quite simply, keeps me sane.