An Open Letter to My Parents: What I Needed — Not What I Thought I Wanted

By Paul Dinan (NE’23)

Dear Mom and Dad,

Spending two weeks back on campus this summer, welcoming students to TAC-New England for the High School Summer Program, has brought my thoughts back to my own decision to come to this new campus three years ago. What if I had made a different choice? Where would I be without the priceless formation I have received?

My education here at Thomas Aquinas College would look very different if it weren’t for your constant support, guidance, and love. Although I can point to many teachers, coaches, and mentors who have offered me their guidance over the years, my formation has largely been the work of your hands.

I am writing to express my gratitude for all you have given me.

You were the first to foster a sense of wonder in my soul and answer the countless questions I would ask as a young boy about the creation that surrounds us. It was your firm and loving guidance that helped me navigate the murky waters of adolescence, always giving me what I needed and not what I thought I wanted. It was you who urged me, day in and day out, to finish a trying math assignment, to refine a paper that needed just a little more time, to sit at the piano for a half hour before dinner and practice, or to go to the courts and run my serve between tennis lessons.

Our family life has truly helped me to start contemplating the mysteries of the holiest of families in Nazareth, where our Blessed Mother and St. Joseph contemplated the Creator of the marvelous order that we strive to understand. Most importantly, it is your example that has shown me that Our Lord is Wisdom itself, and that He alone is the ultimate end of any education.

In the most beautiful ways, Thomas Aquinas College has continued to foster and develop the formation that you have given me. The wonderful conversations, both in and out of the classroom, with tutors and with peers, remind me of talking for hours around our dinner table. The same determination that you instilled in me has brought me through many demanding Newtonian propositions and dense passages from Aristotle’s Physics or St. Thomas’s Summa Theologiae.

Dad, your life has been a great witness to the importance of embracing and carrying on the Western intellectual tradition. The great love you instilled in me for these ancient authors has provided an indispensable undergirding for studying many of the foundational works that we make our way through at the College. You have taught me what it looks like to be a true and ardent lover of Wisdom and to pursue it wholeheartedly.

Mom, your example and our frequent conversations have proved invaluable for my understanding the true nature of education, as opposed to the many false alternatives which our culture proposes today. You have always pushed me to educate myself in every area. With your guidance, I can see more clearly the balance which is so hard to attain in all the different spheres of life but which is so necessary for human growth.

Without both of you together, my experience at Thomas Aquinas College would not be nearly what it is, and for this I want to express my deepest gratitude. For the rest of my life, I am confident that I will ceaselessly draw strength from my time on the majestic hills of the Connecticut River Valley, where I am in thrilling pursuit of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness itself.

Love,
Paul