Providence

by Daniel Quinn

  After fifteen years and two failed marriages, I was finally ready for psychotherapy.

  Everything I told you about my childhood was shaped by what I learned during the two years I worked with Madame Saichy. I certainly didn’t come to her with the understanding that I had a compulsive need to be perfect, based on the mistaken notion that being perfect would make me lovable. These were things we worked out during the course of long months of effort. I gradually came to understand that perfection was my substitute for adequacy: If I was perfect, no one would notice how worthless I was.

  And how did I come to think of myself as worthless? That was easily answered, though the answer seemed to do me no good. My parents had convinced me I was worthless—in a thousand ways that I won’t bore you with —but knowing this fact didn’t help, because as far as I could see they were absolutely right. Stripped of my perfection, what was I good for? Not a damned thing, as far as I could see. Oh, I was a hell of a writer and editor, and a pretty good boss, but who cares about things like that? As a person, I was a washout. My entire strategy with people I met (especially women, of course) was to trick them into thinking I was someone worth knowing—someone perhaps even worth loving. Every word, every gesture, had to be calculated to this end. Everything I did was a lie, because the truth was that I was utterly hollow. This was what had to be hidden, my devastating secret. In this undertaking, spontaneity was obviously the greatest enemy. To be spontaneous would be to reveal the great yawning emptiness inside of me.

  When I reached this point of understanding, after perhaps a year, Madame Saichy said to me, “You know, there really isn’t very much wrong with you,” and I laughed, having at last figured out just how much was wrong with me. But she persisted. “There will come a day,” she said, “when you’ll be flooded with self-esteem. It won’t happen in an hour or a day or a week, but the time will come when you’ll be able to look at yourself and recognize your own worth without a shadow of a doubt.”

  I shook my head, knowing that this hopeless prediction was meant to encourage me but unable to give it the least credit. She might as well have said that I would one day find a magic lantern with three wishes in it. She knew of course that I was incapable of taking her word for this—or of even understanding what she was talking about. Nevertheless, as things turned out, it happened just the way she predicted, except for one detail: It did happen in an hour.

  I suppose it must have been half a year later. I was profoundly stuck and profoundly discouraged. Nothing had happened in months. I understood how I’d gotten this way, but so what? My parents’ estimate of me was that I was about as wonderful as a wart, and all I could see was that they were right. I said to Madame Saichy, “For God’s sake, if you see something of value in me, tell me what it is!”

  “That I cannot do—must not do,” she replied (of course). “What I see doesn’t matter. Only what you see matters. It is you who must esteem yourself, not me. Without self-esteem, the esteem of others is worthless.”

  I left her office at an all-time low. In fact, I was so desperate that I was willing to try something completely silly. Bussing down Sheridan Road on my way to work, I took out a scrap of paper, a bank deposit receipt or something, and headed it with these words: Things that are good about me. I was sure that, having taken this brave but foolhardy step, I wasn’t going to be able to think of a single thing to write, but, by golly, suddenly words were pouring out of my pen: I’m reasonably trustworthy, I can keep a secret, I’m never deliberately cruel, I honor my promises, I’m fair, I can see things from other people’s point of view, I can own up to my mistakes, and so on. I can’t remember all I wrote. A lot of it was nonsense anyway, but that didn’t matter. The clouds parted and rushed off toward the horizon the way they do in stop-motion photography. The light flooded in, and it all came clear. I was transformed—not in an hour, in a single minute. It was literally all over. Just as Madame Saichy had said, I was flooded with self-esteem, and it was never going to go away.

  It wasn’t that I’d found a collection of virtues that made me lovable. In the course of writing out my list, I’d stumbled on the key insight: What makes people lovable isn’t being perfect, it’s simply being human and, reading that list, I saw that that’s what I was. I was within the range. Just as Madame Saichy had said, there wasn’t much wrong with me. I wasn’t a saint (which is what I’d hoped to be when I was trying to be perfect), but I also wasn’t a monster (which is how I’d come to view myself in the past two years). I was human. I was ordinary. I was like other people, and if other people are worthy of love, then so was I! Why on earth shouldn’t people love me?

  And I suddenly saw that, just as I was like other people, other people were like me. Even women were like me, because they too were human. I was waiting for them to love me—and, being just like me, they were also waiting for me to love them. They wanted my love! And why the hell not?

  By the time I reached my office, I was literally a changed man. I was a foot taller. I was ready to embrace everyone in my path. At last I understood the obvious truth. No one wanted me to be perfect. Everyone wanted me to be like them—and I was. I was one of them. At the age of thirty-seven, I had at last joined the human race. I no longer had to guard against spontaneity. People wanted me to be spontaneous. Nobody cared if I made mistakes. Nobody was watching to see if I made mistakes. I was free of all that.

  The needy are insatiable. I know that because I was once one of them. I was like hundreds of millions of men in our culture. The hollowness inside of me was so vast that the love of one woman was not nearly enough to fill it. Who’s the basketball player who boasts of having had ten thousand women? Men typically regard this as a tremendous, enviable success. They wish they could have ten thousand women—a million women! This isn’t a measure of their virility (as they like to imagine); it’s a measure of their incalculable neediness.

  I suddenly saw that, just as I was like other people, they were like me. Even women were like me, because they too were human.

  Now, for the first time in my life, I had left the ranks of the needy. I was no longer insatiable. I no longer needed every woman in the world. One would be enough. I no longer had to make a try for every single woman who crossed my path. This meant that genuine friendship with women was possible. From that point on, I no longer had to pretend to be liberated. From the moment we met, women knew I was following no hidden agenda with regard to them. They knew I wasn’t just feeding them a line, wasn’t scheming for a way to get something from them they weren’t prepared to give.

  This book that I’m talking here tonight with you—you didn’t know it was a book, but it is—this book, I’ve decided, will be called Providence.…

  How do I define Providence? I’ll answer that the way a mathematician will answer you if you ask for a definition of the word set. In mathematics set is an undefined term. Unless you’re a mathematician (or are used to dealing with mathematicians), you will demand to know how on earth you can have a study or a theory that is based on an undefined term, but this will get you nowhere. In this book Providence is an undefined term. This is a book about Providence, a book in which one can learn about Providence, without ever having it defined. Every time you hear me say, “It was my good fortune at this point that …” or “As luck would have it …” or “If this thing had happened just one week earlier …” or words to that effect, you’ll know I’m talking about Providence. I may have given you the impression that this book is about me or about the origins of Ishmael, but in fact it’s about Providence … whatever that may be.

  Now …

  A week after this great transformative epiphany was the occasion of our annual Christmas party at Fuller & Dees Publishing, where I was the executive editor, second in command. This wasn’t your ordinary Christmas party, an office party with Christmas decorations. Our way of doing business was to have a small core staff and an army of freelancers: writers, designers, editors, illustrators, and so on, and this party was for all of th
em, along with another small army of printing salesmen, paper salesmen, typesetters, and so on. This was quite a bash.

  One of the women at the party was a freelance writer who was working on a project of mine. I have the impression that I’d talked to her for an hour total in the course of our business. She evidently liked to keep this sort of contact at a minimum, because when an assignment was due, I’d find it shoved under the door when I arrived in the morning. I had my eye on her this night. I watched with great amusement as one of the printing salesmen started putting the moves on her. Having been there myself, I knew exactly what was going through his mind. I actually saw him slip his wedding ring off and pocket it. When he picked up the telephone, I moved close enough to hear him call his wife and explain that he might be a little later than he thought.

  I watched him romancing her with glum calculation, waiting for his moment, waiting, waiting, waiting till the time would be just right for him to say, “Hey, would you like to have dinner with me?”

  It was expected of me that I’d stick around at least until the party peaked and began to run downhill. When it finally did, I went over to where this writer and printing salesman were standing and said to her, “Hi. Would you like to go get a hamburger?”

  Both of them looked a little stunned, but she quickly said, “Sure,” and went to get her coat.

  The printing salesman’s eyes were bugging out as he goggled at me in bafflement. Finally he said—believe it or not—“Can I come too?”

  I said, with elegant simplicity: “No.”

  And that was that. That was how it began between Rennie and me.

  One week after making the discovery that I didn’t need all the women in the world, I only needed one, I found the only one I needed. A week earlier I wouldn’t have been ready for her, I would have been no better off than that dumb printing salesman. A week earlier I would have been incapable of simply walking up and issuing an invitation. A week earlier I wouldn’t have dreamed of inviting her to anything but the most extravagant restaurant in Chicago. A week earlier I wouldn’t have had nearly enough self-confidence to tell the printing salesman to get lost.

  One week. One week makes it Providence.

  That I was ready for Rennie was providential not only for me but for her. Ours was a great love story—but a story for another time. Dawn is soon going to be making itself felt out there.

  Removing the dominating handicap of my emotional life didn’t free me of problems. Rather, it freed me to recognize that I had a different sort of problem to solve, which was to find a direction for my life.

  You need two points to determine a line. Fixed only at its pivot point, the needle of a compass can do nothing but spin round and round uselessly; it must have a second point to fix its direction: magnetic north. The point I was spinning round and round was that hour at Gethsemani. That was my pivot point. I didn’t see that I had another point, which was that mysterious and compelling dream I’d had at age six. But even if I’d been able to guess that these two points determined a line, I would not have been able to see what the line was pointing to.

  I was wandering around in the middle of my life without a compass. I needed someone to show me the way. I needed a guide, a teacher—and this is what I told Madame Saichy, whom I was still seeing even though I was clearly no longer in need of psychotherapy. This was the first she’d heard of this, and she asked me what I needed a teacher for. I don’t remember how I explained it. The model I had in mind was rather like a spiritual director. I wanted someone who would assume a genuine responsibility for my future, the way Father Louis had. I wanted someone with superhuman insight who would be able to look at the compass of my life and know how to stop the needle from its endless, meaningless spinning. Who would be able to say, “Here. Here is the second point that fixes the line. Here is your direction. This is what Providence has been shaping your life toward.”

  Without having the least idea what I was doing, I set out to become my own teacher.

  Well, Madame Saichy listened patiently, and when I was finished she said, “You don’t need a teacher. You will be your own teacher.”

  I’m sure I must have laughed at this notion. I explained that to talk about being your own teacher is like talking about being your own parent. To try to be your own teacher is like trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. No matter. When I finished rolling out all my objections, she said again, “You will be your own teacher.”

  Madame Saichy made only two predictions in the time that I knew her, and, though I scoffed at both, both came true.

  In another five years or so, without having the least idea that that was what I was doing, I would set out to become my own teacher.

  Before this could come about, however, it was necessary to put paid to my illusions about using educational publishing as an instrument of change in the world. (I think I can safely begin to speak more openly in this vein.)

  One of the great, persistent myths of education in our culture is that children become reluctant learners as they grow older. In fact, what they become reluctant about is going to school, where they’re bullied, regimented, bored silly, and very effectively prevented from learning. The learning curve of small children is simply phenomenal during the first five years of their life. They learn the language of their parents—several languages, if several are spoken. They learn four fifths of the vocabulary they’ll use in their everyday activities for the rest of their lives. They easily learn to walk, run, skip, swim, ride a bicycle, draw, print, count, and hundreds of other things they’ll do for the rest of their lives (including reading, if parents will give them a little help). But as soon as they enter school, this learning curve begins to level off, and within a few years it’s practically flat. And the children are blamed for this. In effect, the educators say, “See? If it weren’t for the hard work we do, these kids wouldn’t be learning ANYTHING!”

  One of the absolute principles of education that every teacher learns is that children learn something very easily when they’re ready to learn it, which is to say, when they want to learn it. The classic example is batting averages. Kids who become interested in baseball learn to figure batting averages without the slightest effort—without being “taught” at all. It’s as though they take it in through their pores. Children find this operation extremely difficult to learn when it’s taught as a subject in class, but if they have a reason to learn it—their own reason—they learn it in no time.

  As I say, everyone in education knows this—but they would never dream of allowing children to learn this way as a general rule. That wouldn’t do at all, because of course how would you organize such a thing? How can you possibly know when a given child will develop a reason to learn how to read a map? And what would you do when you found out? No, the only way to organize learning is to give children a reason to learn all at the same time. This is called motivating them. You have thirty children in your class and the curriculum says it’s time to teach them some map-reading skills, so now you motivate them to learn about maps. You try to manufacture something that approximates the interest kids have when they learn to figure batting averages.

  As soon as children enter school, their learning curve begins to level off, and the children are blamed for this.

  Of course it doesn’t work, that goes without saying. No one expects it to work. When kids learn to figure batting averages, they’re responding to a motivation that arises within them. This is something they want to do. Map reading is something you want them to do. No matter. Your task is to “motivate,” so you “motivate”—the more the better.

  Our entire program is based on this argument: “We know kids learn effortlessly if they have their own reasons for learning, but we can’t wait for them to find their own reasons. We have to provide them with reasons that are not their own. This doesn’t work and we know it doesn’t work, but it’s the only practical way to organize our schools.”

  What? How would I organize the schools? To ask this ques
tion presupposes that we must have schools, doesn’t it? I prefer to think about problems the way engineers do. If a valve doesn’t work, they don’t say, “Well, we must have valves, so let’s try two valves.” If a valve doesn’t work, they say, “Well, what would work?” Their rule is, if it doesn’t work, don’t do it more, do something else.

  We know what works for children up to the age where we ship them off to school: Let them be around you, pay attention to them, talk to them, give them access to as much as you can, let them try things, and that’s it. They’ll take care of the rest. You don’t have to strap small children down and teach them to speak, all you have to do is talk to them. You don’t have to give them crawling lessons or walking lessons or running lessons. You don’t have to spend an hour a day showing them how to bang two pots together; they’ll figure that out all by themselves—if you give them access to the pots.

  Nothing magical happens at the age of five to render this process obsolete or invalid. You would know this if you observed what happens in cultures that we in our arrogant stupidity call primitive. In primitive cultures, parents simply go on keeping the children around, paying attention to them, talking to them, giving them access to everything, letting them try out things for themselves, and that’s it. They don’t herd them together for courses in tracking, pottery making, plant cultivation, hunting, and so on. That’s totally unnecessary. They don’t give them history lessons or craft lessons or art lessons or music lessons, but—magically—all the kids grow up knowing their history, knowing their crafts, knowing their arts, knowing their music. Every kid grows up knowing everything—without a single minute spent in anything remotely like a school. No tests, no grades, no report cards. Every kid learns everything there is to learn in that culture because sooner or later every kid feels within himself or herself the need to learn it—just the way some kids in our culture get to a point where they feel the need to learn how to compute batting averages.…