On Incompleteness

Writing personal essays drill 3: On … (meditative: move from concrete experience to philosophical thoughts)

In fall 2001, I audited a class in the computer science department while working full-time at the University of Chicago. I was curious about how lines of code would make a machine work. The course was interesting enough for me to audit the next one in the following quarter. Then, I don’t remember what got into my mind. I registered for the last sequel in spring 2002 as a graduate-student-at-large. Oh well, within the first couple of weeks, I painfully realized that I was torturing myself. My brain had little usefulness for the programming.

I needed help, so I emailed my supervisor, Karen, to ask for permission to meet one of the teaching assistants during my office hours. She replied that she would leave the decision to my discreet judgment. So, I went to the TA office and got some help. But, I needed more help! So, I visited the professor. She spent time explaining how I should approach programming--from top to bottom and from abstract concept to concrete coding. In the end of the conversation, I talked about another concern, which was my grade. (I didn't care at all even when I got only half of the GPA that my sister received in her college.) I must have been ridiculously serious about the course that I was taking. The professor offered a hopeful contract to the poor student: “Do as much as you can. If your performance is not good, I will give you ‘incomplete’ and you will try again next year.”

One day Karen asked me how I was doing in my class. I repeated what the professor had told me. She typed on her text-to-speech device, “It’s very generous. At some points, every one’s life is incomplete”, then hit a button so that I could hear it. She wasn’t able to speak. I first met her in April 2000 right after she had a major surgery on her tongue. She had developed a strange illness. She couldn’t talk, and was choked sometimes. She described herself as disabled. In fall 2002, after three years of administrative leave, she was ready to teach again with timely promotion to full professor. But she never got back to campus after summer 2002, and died at home in the following year. She was 51 years old.

I completed the course with grade A. But Karen couldn’t complete her life. Life might be incomplete by nature. Some tasks may be complete along the path of life, but haven’t we felt emptiness right at the moment when a long-waited goal was accomplished? That could be because it was done and we would never go back to the task again. On the other hand, incompleteness leaves room for challenge, retrial, and improvement in the future. Nevertheless, incompleteness is meaningful only when one strives for completeness. Or, it would be a falsely articulated laziness. It is fine to feel incomplete. Gladly accept it. But don’t forget to return to your goal, be persistent and struggle again. Even in that case, at a certain point, we might have to leave it as is whether complete or not. Then, the incompleteness will turn into completeness and our mind will be at peace again.

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