For the next two weeks, students will line up at my office door for advising conferences. They seek out guidance, and for better or worse, their assigned college advisor is to be the guide. It is that time of the semester when Murray State students can pre-register for classes for the Fall, 2011 semester. Yes, we are already thinking of the Fall semester! Before students are allowed to register, they must meet with an advisor to chart out their courses. By last count, I had some twenty advisees.
It is always a daunting task to sit down with a student to chart out courses, to chart out a life. Some students know from the first day they step foot on our campus what they wish to major in. Others will change majors multiple times during their undergraduate careers. This is a crucial time in a student’s life, a time of seeking out one’s life calling. And here am I, trying to dish out advice to young, impressionable young people. Here am I, someone who is so often in the dark, trying to help students see the light.
I suppose one of the most frightening things to discover in life is that one’s mentors are less than perfect, even flawed individuals. Oh, the horror of finding out that a teacher or coach or minister is, after all, human. We would like to think that those we have trusted to be our guides are everything that we have unreasonably built them up to be. But then, when the years have diminished that aura of goodness or greatness, that patina of invincibility, we come to find out that even our most trusted guides have struggled with the vagaries and meanness of life just like everyone else.
At the end of his tour of England, and at the end of his book, In Search of England, H. V. Morton encountered near Kenilworth, just northwest of London, “on one of those hot sleepy midsummer afternoons, when the heat throws a haze low over the meadows,” the ruins of Kenilworth Castle. Upon his approach to “this rambling, chocolate-red ruin” Morton “met an elderly man in a black coat who was saying goodbye to a crowd of American trippers. He waved his stick in the air and stamped his feet on the ground, and instead of smiling at his vehemence, they appeared to treat him with considerable deference.” Morton was to learn that the old man served as the official guide to the castle ruins, and that he deserved his reputation as “the best guide in England.”
The old man collected another group of tourists, some of whom, “having no proof as yet of his virtues, laughed behind his back as he waved his dramatic stick.” Soon, though, it became clear that this tour would be one like no other, for “this old man,” according to Morton, had “soaked himself in Kenilworth.” “He lives Kenilworth, he loves Kenilworth.” At one point, Morton wrote, “from the mouth of this extraordinary guide flowed a magnificent oration. He built up the tattered walls of Kenilworth for us, [and] he took us through the Middle Ages. . . . There was not a sound now from his flock.” He seemed to embody the ruins; he seemed “to our astonished eyes,” Morton recalled, “to be the spirit of the place.”
According to Morton, “it had been a remarkable tour de force. He left us rather bewildered, rather like children when the story had been told.” For in one brief hour’s tour, the guide had taught the group “about the long pageant of history that is England, the evil and the good that have marched side by side down the centuries.” “England!” he finally cried out to the tourists. “You now stand in the heart of England. Are you proud of her, of your share in her? . . . I know that I am.” What a performance! What a guide!
After the performance, Morton followed the guide back to the gate. There he was, already waving his stick at the next group preparing to take the tour. Morton complimented the elderly guide “on the dramatic genius of his address.” “Ah,” the old man said as he peered out at Morton. And it was only then that Morton saw that the guide was partially blind. “I am glad that you feel like that. I was an actor once . . . but”—and “here he pointed to his eyes”—“my career ended before it began!” Morton then realized that “the best guide in England” was all but blind, and that it was his failing sight that allowed others to see so well.
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