The University of the Eternal Now

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It was 4:18 p.m. on a Wednesday. The sky was the color of a wet slate roof, and a steady, silent rain was falling on the city. I was sitting on the floor, cleaning the lens of an old camera, listening to Bill Evans play “Waltz for Debby.” The piano sounded like raindrops hitting a tin roof.

Someone asked me recently: “What colleges have you attended?”

I looked at the diploma on the wall—or rather, the empty space where a diploma should be. I realized that the question was flawed. It assumed that “college” is a place you go to, rather than a state of mind you inhabit.

I have attended two universities. Neither of them had a campus. Neither of them charged tuition, though both cost me everything I had.

1. The University of the Backpack (The Scavenge)

The first college I attended was the Open Road.

I didn’t register for classes. I bought a one-way ticket to a continent where I didn’t speak the language. My dormitory was a cheap hostel that smelled of curry and damp wood. My professors were bus drivers, street vendors, and the silence of mountain passes.

The Curriculum:

• Physics: Learned by fixing a broken motorcycle engine on the side of a dirt road in Asia.
• Economics: Learned by bargaining for a bowl of rice when you only have three coins left.
• Sociology: Learned by realizing that people in remote villages are exactly the same as people in high-rise apartments, just with different “texture packs.”

This university taught me that answers are cheap, but questions are expensive. It taught me that if you want to understand how the world works, you have to get your hands dirty. You have to tinker. You have to be lost.

2. The University of the Empty Room (The Descent)

The second college I attended—and am still attending—is the Library of Silence.

This is a harder school. There are no parties. There are no roommates. There is just you, a chair, and a book that is slightly too difficult for you to understand.

The Curriculum:

• Foundations: I stopped reading the “news” (which is just gossip) and started reading the “source code.” Physics. Math. Philosophy. The books that have survived for 500 years.
• Self-Management: I learned that the hardest person to lead is yourself. I sat in a room for sixty minutes without a phone, staring at a wall. That was my final exam.
• The Rejection of Status: In regular college, you try to impress the teacher. In this college, you realize the teacher doesn’t exist. You are learning for leverage, not for credentials.

3. The Karmic Irony of Graduation

As I screwed the lens back onto the camera, a strange thought hit me—a piece of dark, cosmic humor.

We are all waiting to “graduate.”

We are waiting to feel “ready.”

We are waiting for the certificate that says, “Congratulations, you have figured out Life.”

But here is the Wabi Sabi truth: Life is the college. And you never graduate.

There is a karmic irony to it. The moment you finally get the certificate—the moment the Dean hands you the diploma and says, “You are done, you have learned it all”—is the exact moment you die.

Death is the graduation ceremony.

You are left hanging in the void, holding a piece of paper that says you finally understand how to live, just as you stop doing it.

4. The Curriculum of the Now

So, if there is no graduation until the end, what are we doing?

We are in the Classroom of the Present.

Most of us are skipping class. We are sitting in the lecture hall (our lives), but we are looking at our phones. We are worrying about the next semester (the future) or regretting the last exam (the past). Meanwhile, the lesson is happening right in front of us.

• The way the light hits the rain on the window.
• The specific taste of the coffee.
• The sound of the jazz piano.

You can learn every. single. day.

To truly learn, you must understand the curve of knowledge. We often think we know more than we do, only to realize how little we know.

• Be a Freshman forever. Stay on the left side of the curve, or deep in the valley of humility. Keep your “Beginner’s Mind.” The moment you think you are a Senior, you stop learning.
• Audit every class. Listen to the birds. Study the way your cat stretches. Analyze why you felt angry at the traffic light.
• Ignore the grades. Status is a game for people who don’t know who they are.

I put the camera down. The record ended. The room was silent, filled only with the grey light of the afternoon.

I am not an alumnus of anywhere. I am a student of here.