August 7, 2023

Re: “The Strange,” Midlife Crises, and the Virtue of Acceptance

Everyone has heard the saying “life is strange,” but what exactly does it mean? The word’s etymology offers some clues. “Strange” is derived from the Latin modifier extraneus, indicating something or someone that comes “from without.” That which is “strange” does not emerge organically from a familiar environment but, rather, is experienced as an external imposition. For example, I choose to live among my family and friends, but if an unknown person were to appear at my door, I would call him a “stranger.” He is infiltrating my domain. He is there of his own volition, not of mine, and I must tease out his intentions. That is why “the strange” is often received as a threat. We neither want it nor understand it, and yet we must confront it all the same.

So have things been with me over the past few years, culminating in my July 2023 resignation as a full-time professor at Villanova University. As I will explain, this decision was truly “strange,” an eventuality that forced its way into my life. This post, then, represents an attempt to come to grips with the extraneus choice I never wanted to make. And yet, in doing so, I hope to transform it from an existential threat into something else—a fate that I can accept and perhaps even a blessing.

There and Back Again

In the spring of 2012, I was presented with an enviable opportunity: I received two tenure-track job offers within a few days of one another. One was in the Southeast, not far from where I grew up in Alabama; the other was at Villanova. Given the precariousness of the academic job market, I was obviously elated to have two great options. At the time, I was a three years removed from my doctoral work at the University of Oxford; I had already been married for over a decade and had three sons, the youngest of whom had experienced a number of health problems as a baby. Thus it was tempting to stay in the Southeast, where I had been teaching since returning from England. But ultimately the opportunity to work Villanova, a major university in the Northeast, proved too alluring. In the summer of 2012, we bought a modest three-bedroom house on Philadelphia’s Main Line, ready to settle in for the long haul.

For the first several years, life was a challenge, but not atypically so. Our fourth child, and only daughter, was born in 2013. And I was working extremely hard to make sure that I would get tenure. Admittedly, I was driven by fear at this time: every junior academic has heard horror stories of rejected tenure applications, and I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. I wrote every single day—even, as my wife would doubtless attest, on Christmas Day—and I eventually wound up with a fairly extensive body of work. Tenure came easily, as did promotion to full professor a few years after that. I couldn’t believe it: I was actually a success in this business—a kid from Alabama, raised by a single mother, who didn’t get on an airplane until I was 21 years old.

Indeed, I don’t want to say that I grew up in poverty, but I definitely was not privileged. My dad died of esophageal cancer when I was six years old, and my mom was a special-ed teacher who, after contracting polio as a child, increasingly struggled with various physical limitations. We had little in the way of extra money. A “big” summer trip for us was a weekend in places like Gatlinburg, Tennessee or Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. I spent most of my time playing (and thinking about) sports. In high school, I was a good athlete and student, but I only considered going to one university—the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where my dad had served as Professor of Mechanical Engineering. I applied to UAB principally because I received a significant tuition discount due to his years of service. That I would later get an opportunity to earn my own doctorate and to teach in a university was profoundly gratifying—a dream come true, as they say. Hence, as the twenty-first century was entering its third decade, I had the job I always wanted; my wife had a good career as a math teacher; and my kids were doing well and getting the opportunities (from enjoying the stability of a two-income household to having their dad coach them in little league) that I didn’t have when I was younger.

Again, though, life is strange. On the morning of February 23, 2020, my family and I took the short drive from Philadelphia to Manhattan. It was a Sunday, which meant free parking on the street—a real boon. We found a spot in the Bowery, walked to church at the Basilica of Saint Patrick's Old Cathedral in Little Italy, got lunch in a nearby restaurant, and then toured some of Bob Dylan’s old haunts in Greenwich Village. The weather was uncommonly good, and the streets were crowded. Washington Square Park was especially busy with buskers and revelers, all trying to take advantage of the springlike temperatures. The only “stains” on the afternoon, apart from my kids’ unceasing requests for ice cream, were the news stories about the arrival of COVID-19 on American shores. At this early juncture, fear of COVID-19 was loosely associated with a kind of xenophobia. So New Yorkers were actually encouraged to congregate, and we thought nothing of going to crowded restaurants or public places, despite the headlines. Needless to say, the situation would change drastically in the coming weeks, when schools (and pretty much everything else) were shut down for a lengthy period of time. Villanova pushed all classes to a virtual format on March 23, and, soon after, we left Philadelphia for over two months, initially staying at my in-laws’ home in Shelby County, Alabama and later retreating to a cabin in Cooperstown, New York.

Needless to say, I’ll never forget those weeks. They obviously had a historically significant impact on global society, but they also proved to be an inflection point in my own life. In a bizarre coincidence, just as the pandemic (and its concomitant socio-economic ills) seemed to reach a zenith, my mom came down with a nasty case of food poisoning, landing her in the hospital for several days, followed by a stint in rehab. Her ability to stand and to walk had been in decline for years, but, after a couple weeks in bed, it was all but gone. So began a flurry of challenges. Taking care of my mom largely fell to my sister, who was busy with a family of her own. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, COVID-19 proved to be a cultural and political lightning rod. Two of my sons were attending a private school in Philadelphia, which did its best to stay open in the wake of increased governmental restrictions. But my oldest son, then a junior in a public high school, spent almost the entire 2020-21 academic year taking classes in his bedroom. Moreover, while my younger two sons were predominantly baseball players and still able to play games and tournaments outside, my oldest son was a basketball player, who largely missed out on his high-school season. I don’t think he was ever “depressed” in a clinical sense, but it was clear that he was frustrated, unhappy. Coupled with my mom’s troubles in Alabama, plus my wife’s growing concerns about her own parents, this was the first time that my wife and I began talking about returning to the Southeast.

Still, any serious discussion of this possibility was a couple years away. To be sure, I could not imagine leaving Villanova for a number of reasons. Not only did I feel like I was a valuable (and valued) member of my department and of my college, but the academic job market had gone from incredibly bad to soul-crushingly worse. When I was finishing my PhD in late 2008, there was a general feeling that one could attain a tenure-track position in the humanities, provided that one was willing to be patient—say, move two or three times, do some part-time or full-time teaching as a “visiting professor,” consistently apply for job openings, and, of course, publish at an elite level. Such expectations were agonizing, but, for the committed, they were worth it. I myself had spent a couple years driving two hours (each way) for a full-time visiting professorship…and felt fortunate to have the opportunity! Alas, by the early 2020s, an already declining job market was being effectively finished off by COVID-19. To leave Villanova now would be tantamount to career suicide, and that was a risk I was not willing to take, not after working so long and so hard to attain my present position.

In November 2020, while teaching on campus at Villanova, I came down with COVID-19 myself, though pandemic-related restrictions ended the semester early—or, in this case, right on time. I felt horrible for a few days but, thankfully, made a swift recovery. I was back in the classroom in Spring 2021, and, as the government began to rollout its vaccination program, there was growing optimism that the pandemic would end soon. I spent much of that summer in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, watching my sons play in baseball tournaments featuring teams from Texas, California, and other U.S. states, not to mention international clubs from Canada, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The expenses were often astronomical, though my wife and I relished the additional opportunities to be closer to family. Still, we returned to Philadelphia in August 2021, bullish about the future. It was my oldest son’s final year of high school, and my wife was starting a new position at work. Meanwhile, I was on the back half of a pair of book-length projects, Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard’s Philosophy and Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence. Things were good. I had no idea that one of the most harrowing periods of my life was fast approaching.

Looking back, the trouble began to December 2021. As the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 spread around the country, lockdowns returned to the Northeast. No matter how one feels about the efficacy of such measures, I can’t imagine that anyone would say they are easy on families. For several weeks, it seemed possible that my son’s senior year of high school would wrap up online. My wife and other children faced similar challenges in their own schools, and, for the first time, it seemed that the pandemic—at least as experienced in the Northeast—would never end. My wife’s homesickness returned with even greater ferocity. I suggested that we maybe we should move within the Philadelphia region, where I could keep my job at Villanova but perhaps also find a less volatile socio-political situation. We looked at houses in places like Downingtown, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles west of Villanova, but this option raised additional questions. Would my kids keep attending school in Philadelphia? If not, where would they go? A sense of paralysis began to set in: there were hours of discussions, many of them unpleasant.

It was then that something unexpected happened. On a gray and bitter Friday afternoon in February 2022, my sister called me and said that she and her family needed to move near Huntsville, Alabama, about 90 minutes north of my mom. It was a work-related decision and could not be avoided. Within an hour or two of getting this news, my mom called me in a panic: if my sister and her family were to leave the Birmingham area, and if we remained in Philadelphia, she would have no choice but to move into a nursing facility. She was more despondent than angry—a feeling that intensified in the coming weeks, as my sister and her family were looking for a new house. For me, it was all getting too much. I didn’t know what to do anymore. My career mattered a great deal to me, but at what point should one stop giving it priority? How many people have to be wounded in the process? In April 2022, I did what any reasonable person would do: I looked to tread water! I discussed my situation with various administrators at Villanova, and we agreed that I could take a year to sort things out. I would teach remotely during 2022-23, so that I might have sufficient flexibility to help get my mom settled.

But the merry-go-round was still spinning. Not long after making this decision, both my mother-in-law and my sister’s mother-in-law were diagnosed with cancer. The mounting gravity of the situation reopened talks about a complete move to Alabama. My wife didn’t want to be apart from her mom during this difficult time, and my sister would now have additional responsibilities helping her extended family. Thus a new, more radical suggestion was broached: maybe we should all move back to Alabama? This would be a hazardous decision, of course. Moving four kids to what (for them) was a new part of the country would be a challenge even under ideal circumstances. And yet, we were also running headlong into a myriad of problems—family health issues, moving expenses, new schools, etc. Plus there was no guarantee that Villanova would allow me to maintain this arrangement for years to come. I myself didn’t think so, but I spoke to a number of people who were cautiously optimistic. “They’ll likely work with you,” I was told, “it’s just a matter of finding a suitable arrangement.” To be fair, there were naysayers too. Ominously, a friend in my department expressed surprise that I was granted permission to work remotely even for a semester, much less for an entire academic year. Bottom line, I knew I was taking a risk, but I also felt I had no choice.

The fall of 2022 was vicissitudinous. Sadly, my sister’s mother-in-law passed away in September, and my mom was beginning to experience severe edema, further limiting her mobility. On the other hand, my mother-in-law saw her health rapidly improve, and my wife and kids were mostly enjoying their new schools. I myself missed being in Philadelphia—a feeling heightened when the Phillies went on a startling run in the MLB playoffs—but my fall courses were going very well online. In fact, I was busier than ever at work, supervising multiple PhD students, teaching my regular course load, and finishing my upcoming book on Bob Dylan. Furthermore, I had garnered multiple new book contracts over the summer, and my research was now “locked and loaded” for the foreseeable future. At last, when my student evaluations for Fall ‘22 turned out to be highly favorable, I started imagining that this might work out after all. I reasoned that, as long as my productivity remained at an exceptional level, a path forward should be viable. The decision between career and family would actually prove to be a false one.

As it turned out, I got ahead of myself. In January 2023, just as planning for the next academic year began in earnest, I put in a request to negotiate a new arrangement with Villanova. I had a few ideas in mind—for instance, a couple weeks on campus at the beginning and end of each semester, with the middle portion completed online. I knew this wasn’t an ideal scenario, and I was ready to take a salary reduction. But it seemed doable, especially for graduate students. Indeed, as a tenured full professor, who has published widely in my field, I reckoned that my contributions to our doctoral program in Theology would be considered invaluable. This itself was not a bad assumption. What I misunderstood was the weight that the administration would actually assign to graduate education. Certainly Villanova would like good, even first-class grad programs, but the university’s “bread and butter” is the undergraduate experience—and, in a pointed irony, the COVID-19 pandemic now meant that that experience would be absolutely rooted on campus. Hence, after a few weeks of conversations and emails, a definitive choice was presented to me: either return to full-time work on campus or resign. I was given until July 1 to make up my mind.

To say that the months since then have been grueling would be an understatement. First, my mom’s health has continued to worsen. By March her edema, quite literally, weighed her down so much that she could no longer “pull” herself into bed. There were many nights where my wife and I would be at her house at 11pm, even as late as 1am, helping her. My sister and I continued to explore new living arrangements on her behalf, but, as many people know, such moves are as delicate as they are expensive. In the end, we didn’t work fast enough. In April, my wife and I visited my mom on a Sunday afternoon and found her face-down on the floor. Her scooter had tipped over the day before, and she had been lying there for over twelve hours. She was rushed to the ER and spent the better part of six weeks alternating between the hospital and rehab facilities. As I write this, she’s getting ready to move into a “senior living” center, and we’re now preparing to put her house on the market. I think she’s ready this time, tired of the hassle and worry of maintaining her own home—the very one that she and I my dad moved into when he took his faculty position at UAB in the late 1970s.

Yet, while this situation was reaching a crescendo, I was also trying to keep up with everything else—a full course load during the spring semester, the supervision of PhD students, and various departmental service commitments, not to mention my own writing projects and the need to keep four children happy. In late May, I drove up to Philadelphia, visited with several friends, and moved out of my office in Villanova’s Saint Augustine Center. This was a clear sign that I planned to resign, and, oddly, it felt good to be able to admit this reality to my colleagues. Indeed, despite the university’s emphasis on campus life, our department (like many others, no doubt) has not fully recovered from the pandemic. The hallways are emptier than they used to be, and there is less face-to-face interaction. Many of my colleagues were unaware of my situation, and I was glad to get the opportunity to catch up with a few people. To be sure, my mind was now all but made up. I gave away hundreds of books to grad students, partly for their own benefit, but also because I couldn’t cram a decade’s worth of stuff into my car. When I left Villanova’s campus, a sense of detachment came over me. Is this how dreams come to an end—with a sigh? I headed south, knowing that various family arrangements had made it possible for me to take my 16-year-old son to baseball showcases and tournaments for the next six weeks, mostly in Florida and Georgia. Anyone who has experienced the national baseball “circuit” knows that it is by no means a vacation. But it did force my thoughts elsewhere.

Still, on July 1, I knew I had to put my final decision in writing. I hemmed and hawed for over 24 hours, unwilling to actualize what had started to seem like an ever looming potentiality. At last, on the night of Sunday, July 2nd, I sent off an email to various administrators. I expressed my ongoing desire to find “middle ground” but added that, insofar as that was impossible, I had no choice but to resign. Given the July 4th holiday, it took a few days to get a response. In the interim, a small part of me began hoping for a miracle: maybe there would be a last-minute change of heart? Alas, on the morning of July 5th, my resignation was accepted. One administrator expressed condolences, but mostly I was provided with a to-do list: clean out your office, return your laptop, etc. Many of these details were sensible—after all, I had already cleaned out my office—but the “laptop issue” was a very real (and very expensive) punch in the gut. Initially I was angry, doubtless the angriest I’ve been during this whole process. Still, after calming down, I decided to politely express my concerns—that the laptop was several years old; that my ongoing work with graduate students (more on that shortly) necessitated that I keep the laptop; that a new laptop would prove costly for my family. I sent off an email and received a quick and aloof response. “You must return your laptop. There are no exceptions.”

That was a few weeks ago. The laptop has since been returned, and I’m now working on an iPad—which has proven acceptable. In fact, the iPad is the most concrete manifestation of my new situation: it’s more compact, more multipurposive, and more mobile. And perhaps that’s where I find myself as this ordeal has come to a resolution. A pound of flesh has been taken, but I’m still standing. Of course, I am concerned about the future, but one thing is certain: I will not be bored. Indeed, before wrapping up this protracted post, I would like to say a few words about where I plan to go from here.

“Living Forwards”

While working on the above, I was nagged by a couple questions. Why are you writing all this down? And whom does it benefit? In the latter case, I think the answer is simple: it benefits me; it’s a kind of catharsis. Due to the complex nature of university procedures and politics, I’ve essentially had to pretend that none of this is happening over the last year or so. Everything has been said in the subjunctive mood. But now I can shift to the indicative—a refreshing change.

At the same time, however, one rarely (if ever) writes only for oneself. What, then, am I hoping to communicate? First and foremost, I‘d like show that this decision, while ostensibly random, is actually the product of a series of prior decisions, many of which were not my own. No doubt we’d like to believe that we’re the arbiters of our own destiny—this is the “American Dream” in a nutshell—but it’s not altogether true. I’m not trying to suggest that human beings are totally powerless over against external circumstances. And yet, we can only control what we can control—and sometimes that’s not very much. So it is with me. To cite just one case in point: when I was a kid, I vividly remember having the thought, “My mom had polio, but that’s over and done with.” Yet, in truth, polio has defined her entire life, and, now, it has defined mine too. Polio was never vanquished; it simply manifested itself at different times and in different ways. One could say something similar about my dad’s cancer or COVID-19 or the changing nature of higher education or what have you. We are all (to borrow Heidegger’s famous terminology) “thrown” into contingent historical conditions. My time at Villanova was, in a certain sense, “destined.” But my departure was too. I may not like the situation, but my feelings have nothing to do with the cascading circumstances that crystallized in July 2023. Acceptance, however painful, is ultimately necessary to cope with, and to thrive in, a finite world.

It occurs to me that this conclusion resembles that of The Natural (1984), one of the greatest sports movies of all time. As a kid, I liked The Natural for the prodigious home runs swatted by star outfielder Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford). Yet, based on Bernard Malamud’s eponymous 1952 novel, it is also a story of depth and pathos. The movie can be broadly divided into three acts. First, it traces Hobbs’ ascent as a first-rate pitching prospect. Just 19 years old, Hobbs is already capable of dominating major-league hitters, but his pitching career tragically comes to an end when he is shot by a deranged fan—a plot line that was based on a real-life scandal. Second, the movie catches up with Hobbs sixteen years later. He has recently gotten back into baseball, though his injury has forced him to give up pitching and to focus on hitting. Initially dismissed as an aging “nobody,” Hobbs soon garners national attention as the best power hitter in the game. He is indeed a “natural” at baseball—a man gifted enough that he could’ve been (as the movie repeats) “the best there ever was.” But it was not meant to be. In The Natural’s third act, Hobbs’ past wounds resurface. He is consigned to his hospital bed while his team—the fictional but aptly named New York Knights—is on the verge of blowing the pennant. In the scene below, Hobbs is visited by his high-school girlfriend Iris Gaines (a resplendent Glenn Close), who, against doctor’s orders, encourages Hobbs to play in the Knights’ final game of the season. While Hobbs is lamenting who he might have been, Iris wants him to embrace the person he actually is:

Hobbs goes on to play, smashing an epic game-winning home run. Yet, this is the last at-bat of his career. He will not—no, cannot—go down as “the best there ever was.” In the popular imagination, he will even be remembered as someone who failed to meet expectations. Yet, for those closest to him, he has done enough. He is enough. In the movie’s final scene, Hobbs has finally come to accept this destiny, in all of its messiness, and to let go of the one he had always imagined for himself.

It should be underlined here that the movie version of The Natural departs wildly from the novel’s ending. Malamud had envisioned Hobbs as a fallen hero, whose career ends in disgrace. There is no pennant-clinching home run, much less any personal redemption. Hobbs’ past misfortunes, along with his subsequent poor choices, secure his demise. The film, obviously, casts the story in a more cheerful light. The question is: which version is better, more true to life? Many critics have given the edge to Malamud’s novel, preferring its hard-bitten cynicism to the movie’s ostensible deification of Redford’s Hobbs and his salvific swing of the bat. But this critique is not quite accurate. The actual ending of the movie is not Hobbs’ home run; it’s the catch he is having with his young son, back on his farm in Nebraska, with Iris looking on. All three are smiling. In the end, The Natural is not about attaining godlike status; it’s about accepting one’s historical “thrownness” and the incalculable outcomes that emerge (in Kierkegaardian parlance) at the nexus of necessity and freedom.

Whatever the case—and I apologize for the lengthy digression, though at this point it’s possible that no one is still reading!—I should conclude by stating that I will take the cinematic Hobbs as my bellwether. I aspire to acceptance. Moreover, just as Iris emboldens Hobbs to play in his final game, so must I follow my muse and keep doing what I love. What else is there? For those who know me best, this definitely means a lot of baseball. There is always batting practice to throw; there are many more showcases and tournaments on the horizon. And yet, on a personal level, I also intend to maintain several additional pursuits, including (but not limited to) the following:

• While I am no longer a full-time faculty member at Villanova, I have been hired by my department to teach and to supervise in the graduate program. Thus I will “keep” my existing PhD students and am available to work with future ones as well. I’m also teaching one course in Fall 2023, namely, a graduate-level iteration of my longstanding “Theology and Film” course. Obviously, this arrangement gives me less responsibility (among other things!) than my previous position. Still, it is good to “stay in the game.”

• I have been told that I will be nominated for “Emeritus” status at Villanova, which would allow me to remain a part of the university in perpetuity. Though I’m disappointed in how things have gone over the last few months, this is an opportunity I would welcome. Along with Oxford, I consider Villanova one of my genuine academic “homes.”

• I’m about halfway through a new monograph, provisionally entitled Kierkegaard, Statecraft, and the Question of Political Theology. It is already under contract with Bloomsbury Academic and, if all goes as planned, will be released at some point in 2025.

• I’m coediting (with Clark Elliston and Trevor Williams) a book called Theology and Social Media. It’s under contract with Routledge, and the manuscript is due in Spring 2024. I’m also contributing a chapter to this project. It will be titled “‘Despairing of Creation’: Snapchat, Body Dysmorphia, and Creatio ex Nihilo.”

• I’m currently putting the finishing touches on my first novel. It’s under contract with Wipf and Stock, and the manuscript is due in December 2023. I’ll have to say more as the publication date nears, but it’s set to be titled Man of Pain: A Novel. It’s my attempt, however feeble, to translate Cervantes, Flannery O’Connor, and John Kennedy Toole to present-day Alabama. Yeah, you read that right!

This is what I know I’m doing, but there are many other possibilities circulating—podcasts, new books, and so on. I’ve even written a pilot episode for a TV series called Smoketown, though that’s on the shelf—for now anyway. Maybe I’ll also learn how to juggle or to brew Trappist ale or whatever. If you’re interested, just follow me on this Substack, or look for me at the nearest batting cage. I’m always happy to give my arm a break…

God bless.