By John Grindrod
Guest Columnist
During my University of Dayton graduate studies in 1978, while pursuing my Master of Art, some of the course work I took was at night during the school year when I had my own hands so very full with my own classes at St. Marys Memorial. I think my professors knew their classes were made up of almost all high school teachers and were understanding in the amount of work they assigned. However, there was a course that was the outlier, a philosophy course taught in demanding fashion by Professor John Geiger.
To be honest, while I remember every one of my grade school teachers and high school teachers, in my graduate program, Doctor Geiger is the only one I remember. And, if the oft-repeated mantra, “Make yourself be memorable by your energy and effort,” is as true as I believe it is, Doctor Geiger certainly reflects the veracity of that thought.
Admittedly, those with whom I wearily trudged into those night classes to get that degree after long days in our own classrooms and I were not very enthused or motivated students. Rather, we wanted that degree either for the salary bump it would provide or to obtain the necessary degree to become an administrator or both.
However, Doctor John Geiger taught his philosophy course straight up, with lengthy reading assignments and papers both assigned and graded and instilled in us a certain amount of an emotion that sometimes gets a bad rap — fear. Looking back, that surely wasn’t a bad thing, as he respected his discipline so much that he refused to cut corners.
Following the oral exam we all took at course’s end, I felt a real sense of accomplishment in earning that “B.”
Now, at this point in my life, I don’t give a whole lot of thought to philosophy, which the dictionary folks define as “the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.”
However, I’ve always been a sucker for a good quote, especially those that are pithy, as in concise and forceful enough for me to slip into my daily discourse from time to time and present the illusion that I’m a whole lot smarter than I really am. Such quotes are capable of packing quite the punch, even when the words weren’t first spoken by the likes of philosophical hall of famers such as Aristotle, Socrates or Plato.
As for one unlikely philosopher, let me offer Mike Tyson, who once carried the epithet “The Baddest Man on the Planet,” while dominating the heavyweight boxing division throughout much of the 1980s, that is, until a little known Columbus, Ohio, native, Buster Douglas, a 42-1 underdog, pierced Tyson’s air of invincibility by knocking him on his keister in the Tokyo Dome back in 1990. But, it was in the lead-up to another fight earlier when Tyson did indeed seem invincible, a bout with Tyrell Biggs in 1987, when Iron Mike responded to a reporter’s question as to whether he was concerned about the fight plan Biggs had boasted he’d developed by saying, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
While certainly not Aristotelian at its core, given Tyson’s environmental upbringing in a gang-infested section of Brooklyn, the quote is spot on. My guess is he witnessed many times what happens to some when the grandest of plans vanishes instantaneously when the wrath rains down.
When those times come, whether it be when a mate who vowed to love and honor for better and for worse forever wants a divorce, when a boss calls you in to his office 20 years into your company career and tells you you’re the victim of corporate downsizing, or when a man with a stethoscope around a white-coated collar tells you that what was believed to be just routine blood work turned out to be anything but, well, you just got punched in the face. And, that’s when you’ll be truly tested.
I’ll put a wrap on today’s philosophical meanderings by going to the late bluesman, Dr. John. The six-time Grammy winner during an interview was once asked by a reporter about some criticism he’d received and his reaction to it, to which he said, “I’d rather be at war with the whole world than be at war with my own soul.” My, how true that is in life and something to remember when, in following our own convictions, there rises a crescendo of dissenting voices.
Those philosophical pearls can often spring up from some unlikely sources, something I’ll surmise Doctor Geiger would have affirmed.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
