Bob Dylan, non-linear paths, and the Nobel Prize

Thursday St. Olaf gave an honorary degree to Peter Agree, the Nobel Prize winner, chemist, and son of a former St. Olaf professor (of chemistry).   Two things about the event struck me: one in the commendation read by Matt Richey and the other in Agree's remarks.  [The event will be available at www.stolaf.edu in the streaming archives, but as of this morning is not yet posted.]

thanks Enich for this photo: just what I wanted

1)  Matt used the term "non-linear path" to describe Agree's career.  He studied chemistry, but he also traveled around Europe and Asia.  He didn't set out to win a Noble Prize.  In fact, the thing he won for was discovered almost by accident.  Yes, I thought!  There must be room in all our planning and our rubrics and our instructions and our assignments and goals for surprises.  Perhaps this is one of the messages from folks like the Hudson River School painters and Transcendentalists

2) Agree made a strong case for the liberal arts and ended with some lyrics from Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" as a blessing.  He suggested that the virtues extolled there -- may you always do for others, etc.-- are to be prized and that youth helps us remember the ideals that motivate our study and our work.

Both of these comments are important to our thinking about and participating in the American Dream.  The second is a reminder of the ideals and most laudable aspirations of the dream; the first, that pursuit of such a dream is not always best approached directly.  Sometimes the unexpected and unsought is what turns us in the right direction or leads us toward our goal.  Indeed, sometimes it is even the barrier to our plans, the seeming encounter with "un-freedom," that opens the way.