The Tao of Tofu
Remarks Delivered at Convocation
Looking at all of you, from our newest arrivals to our honored emeriti faculty, is an immediate reminder of the cycles of school life. Year after year, summers pass by, the fall returns and our work together as a school resumes. I know that as much as I enjoy the summertime, (which is a great deal indeed) I cannot help but feel a great sense of anticipation and excitement when the fall returns. In the wider world, fall is the season of decline, as the temperatures fall, the growing season ends and the dark of winter approaches. In schools however, the fall is our season of beginning, as new faces join our community, classes resume and teams take the field once more. As the calendar year winds down, we are getting started, and I remind you that at this moment for every one of you anything is possible. No grades have been issued, no games won or lost, no new friendships cemented nor old ones lost. For now, the coming year is perfect.
Alas, as in Eden, perfection cannot last. Soon enough, the demands of life and the rigors of school will break the moment. Things will go wrong, the center will not hold. In the larger world and across history, why this must happen and how we ought to respond has been the focal point of a great many schools of philosophy, both in the Eastern and Western traditions. So in the spirit of the school’s efforts towards global understanding and connecting the perspectives of East and West, I would like this morning to offer a new philosophical perspective I have been thinking about this summer. (As a side note, I should point out that it is a frequently dangerous thing to give an academic too much time to think. The next thing you know, he or she will be arguing that the Earth orbits the sun, or questioning the divine right of kings…)
In any case, this new philosophy is especially well suited to our skeptical and cynical times because unlike traditional philosophy, it is easy to understand and requires no followers. In fact, it’s more of a counter-philosophy, a way not to live your life. And, since we all live in the often alternate reality of a boarding school, a counter-philosophy seems like it would be especially useful for the year ahead.
I call this new school of thought the Tao To Fu, or, loosely translated, The Way of the Bean Curd. Unlike so many schools of thought, the Tofu Way offers in the form of a bland, jellied blob great insight and direction on how not to live life, either at St. George’s or beyond.
To be fair, I confess that I find tofu to be, well, gross. Its pale, mushy, flavorless nature leaves me completely cold. Now, I understand its long and honorable history, I realize it is a beloved staple of millions of people and that a great many vegetarians rely on tofu for protein and trace minerals of various sorts. I respect and cannot argue any of those merits. But as a food, for me, with an admittedly carnivorous bent, it’s just awful. It has no flavor or aroma of its own, and furthermore, I am more than a little unnerved by a meat substitute made from clotted bean juice. To my mind, it is strangely natural and unnatural at the same time, so in general I choose to avoid the stuff. But the Tao To Fu does not approach the issues of school life from the perspective of tofu as an actual food. Rather, The Bean Curd Way focuses on certain qualities of tofu as informing and illuminating a number of aspects of life at St. George’s.
For example, as I noted above, tofu is a perfectly fine, adequate source of protein. But who wants “adequate”? I suspect that few of you have come to St. George’s expecting a merely adequate education. Do you hope to earn “adequate” grades? To win an “adequate” number of games? Will you be content to one day describe your life, your work, your family, as merely “adequate”? I suspect not. You have instead come here to learn the skills and gain the knowledge and experience that will allow you to craft something remarkable in your life and in this world. This could be as large and public as a cure for cancer, or as small and private as a loving family, but in either case, you should be fundamentally unwilling to aim for or settle for “adequate.” You are a uniquely talented group of young men and women, filled with the potential for greatness of all sorts. Don’t squander that potential; don’t waste your talents by settling for adequate efforts, adequate results, or adequate dreams.
As you may also have noticed, tofu is a pretty bland looking food. It’s an “adequate” sort of color. Shaded somewhere between cream and beige, its off-white color is as inoffensive and unremarkable as can be. Herein lies another of tofu’s philosophical shortcomings. Off-white is the color you paint your walls when trying to sell your apartment. You do this since there is essentially nothing to complain about with off white walls. They are completely inoffensive, and therefore will not put off any prospective buyers. At the same time, there’s nothing much to love about off-white walls. No style, no charm, no excitement. So while painting your walls the color of tofu may be a sound business move, it’s a poor model for an interesting and successful life. Again, unlike the Bean Curd, you each possess a colorful mix of experiences, perspectives and talents. Use them. Be yourselves, and create lives with colors and patterns as different and bold as you want them to be. While I recognize that socially and developmentally, adolescence is a time where fitting in is at a premium, if you choose to unveil or discover new interests and talents, this is the place to do it. In a paradoxical corollary of the Tao To Fu, you will find that not only is there a sense of genuine satisfaction and integrity in being yourself, but that by developing the courage to be an original you will become both happier and more successful in your life at St. George’s and beyond. So avoid settling for the safe, the beige, the bland and work this year to express your own particular gifts and talents. Be bold, be true, be colorful.
A final quality of tofu, which has relevance to your lives at St. George’s, is its remarkable ability to absorb the flavors of the other foods with which it’s cooked. As I noted earlier, tofu actually has no flavor or aroma of its own, but if you cook it with chicken, it tastes like chicken. Cook it with steak, and it tastes like steak. Like many people, (and especially teenagers) it is easily altered by the influences around it. Consider what this might mean for your own lives at St. George’s. Unlike the tofu, you might want to be very choosy about the behaviors, people, and circumstances with which you choose to surround yourself. Be certain that the flavors you choose are ones you want to absorb, and avoid those that you don’t. Naturally, this is made easier by your free will and the bean curd’s lack thereof, but we’ll not tread that particular metaphysical path this morning.
Besides, tofu’s nature as a culinary chameleon can inform other aspects of your classes and experiences here as well. For example, do not simply sit there in your classes simmering along and passively absorbing information, while soaking in the perspectives of others. Bring your own ideas, experiences, thoughts and insights to class, to the dorm, to your friends. Participate for heaven’s sake, in classes and in life. Ask questions, seek answers, and encourage others to do the same. If you fail to do this, and you and enough others adopt the tofu approach, in the end there will be no flavor at all – since tofu cooked with tofu tastes like, well, nothing.
So as we approach the start of another new school year, I want to thank you for indulging my lighthearted turn into philosophy, but above all, I wish each of you good luck and fair winds for the year ahead. May you have a year filled with joy and success, friendship and triumph, and may you proceed ever after far removed from the Bean Curd Way. Thank you.
Copyright 2009-2022, Eric F. Peterson, All Rights Reserved