Why they call it "humanities"

Dear Reader,
I have been taking classes at BYU for a couple semesters now. Back when Tom was in his graduate program, a lot of my friends were MBA wives , or dental student wives. And sometimes they would get to talking excitedly about the six figure incomes their husbands would soon be making, and what kind of house in what kind of neighborhood would they buy, what kinds of vacations they would take, etc.These discussions, of course always made me a bit uncomfortable. I've often thought about going to work once my children are a little older. Not only for the income, but as well for the opportunity it would give me to interact with people and the community. During those difficult years when the Professor sweated through the spiritually, and intellectually grueling process of writing a dissertation, I had my doubts about the utility of it all. Not the utility of the dissertation, which was a necessary prerequisite to a university job in the humanities. Not that. I doubted the utility of a non-scientific, non-business education at all. If fewer and fewer people care about the "arts" part of a liberal arts education, then what is the point? If all of this knowledge has no practical application, then why spend all our energy pursuing it? I told myself during those years that if I ever went back to school, I would pursue something practical. Like dentistry. Or accounting. Or finance.

Are you laughing, dear reader? If you know me at all, you should be. That kind of thinking, I am afraid, is a perfect example of wishful thinking. Dentists, as I wrote in my post a few days ago, are evil. Working with numbers all days strikes me as unbearably dull, and finance... well considering the state of economic affairs in this country right now that hardly seems practical, let alone wholly honorable. Now, before all of the dentists, accountants and financiers out there are repulsed by my offhand judgment, keep in mind I'm speaking for myself. I would be an abject failure at each of those occupations. Time and time again, I am drawn back to history, literature, and music. None of which fit into my conception of practical. But, I'm coming to realize, maybe that isn't the most important thing. If everyone were to be practical in this world, we'd have a lot less color, and much less joy.

The knowledge and perspective I am gaining in my history classes is invaluable to me. I imagine I will move on to literature classes at some point and those, too, will affect me just as profoundly. These things, in the end, refine us as humans, soften the aggressive, impulsive side of us. Perhaps that's something I recognize that I need as a person. Or perhaps, I'm just hopelessly, incurably impractical.