It is a strange title, isn’t it? But it is an apt one.
One of my goals in starting this was to keep the commentary simple and streamlined while avoided jargon-fueled idealistic philosophizing. I will probably fail at this from time to time; such is the cost of being human. I won’t shy away from ideas, but I guess what I’m try to get at is this: I desire to avoid living in some pie-in-the-sky mindset where all anyone ever talks about is how things ought to be. There needs to be some kind of grounding in reality, because things are what they are, not what we wish them to be.
Staying grounded in reality fuels much of my worldview as a teacher. It explains much of my general disdain for directives from on high that clearly will have zero impact on what I (or my colleagues) do as a teacher or what the students need to do in order to learn. However, it has also allowed me to stay temperamentally medium; without an idealistic bubble there’s no crash and subsequent disillusionment. Some may call this cynicism, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but one cannot be a true cynic and remain in the classroom all that long. Such a mentality leads to a very quick burnout in the profession. Or worse, leads one to becoming an educational bureaucrat.
The occasional subversion of the title (at least the “shallow thoughts” portion) will most likely show up when I discuss the struggles of teaching theology in our modern age. What that will reveal more clearly is the second portion of the title - my complicated mind.
Personality-wise, I am a detail oriented type who overthinks many things. In the classroom, this shows up in specificity to what we’re doing: definitions of terms, knowing dates, and giving background context to events.
I am pessimistic by nature; I often joke that I should have been a Calvinist instead of Catholic, but my father also reminds me from time to time that my pessimistic outlook perfectly suits my Philadelphia fandom - always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Ironically, despite my attention to detail and my love of all things baseball, I completely suck at chess. True story, I once lost in three moves!1 I love military history, but you probably wouldn’t want me to plan the battle on one of those big maps. However, I can plan out to the pitch how I would attack the batting order of one of the Phillies’ rivals each time through the lineup. Paradoxes abound!
It should not shock anyone that I am a planner. I like to know at least in the abstract what I am going to do, even if the details are fuzzy. I can be completely flexible, but I need to be in a frame of some sort.
So how, from this detailed, complicated, pessimistic, and borderline cynical mind will you get anything shallow? Beats me, but get it, you will!
Granted, I was 17, but very little has changed in over 25 years on that front.