The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.
We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.
It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.
Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.
This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.
But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves...” “if I’d...” “wish I’d...”
Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.
But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.
We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.
When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.
For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…
What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.
In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.
We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.
We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.
Via Yale Daily News
HERE.
29.5.12
When someone says they love a city — or hate it — they are often telling you what they think of the version of themselves they see reflected in it.
They love — or hate — who they are in that city.
-Chris Turner
Found in his most recent article: Calgary Reconsidered.
Written brilliantly.
Read HERE.
28.5.12
ain't that the case...
We work so hard to keep our head above water that we often forget to stop and look closely at what's below the surface of everyday life.
Today, toss your to-do list, kick up your feet, and enjoy just being.
There is no greater, more complex beauty in the unexplored parts of all things, especially ourselves.
--Source: SELF magazine
22.5.12
21.5.12
ccccoooooooooooooooool.
This picture was taken on Vaadhoo Island, but bioluminescing organisms
are found all over the world. The ones here are probably single-celled
protists and marine crustaceans called copepods. Both glow when they are
disturbed.
(Image: Doug Perrine/naturepl.com)
Read more HERE.
quote of the day
"Happiness is simple. Everything we do to find it is complicated."
-Karen Maezen Miller
-Karen Maezen Miller
The City of Brotherly Love: Philadelphia
A real blue-collar city.
Character, substance and pride.
They love baseball- I've never seen so many baseball fields in such proximity to one another.
And of-course they love their phillies.
There was also no shortage of flyers pride...and any American city that loves hockey is a city I love.
A beautiful place, with great, great people.
I didn't eat a cheesesteak, but I did have a hoagie.
This was one of my favorite days in a really, really long time.
Thanks for the memories, Philadelphia. I hope to be back very soon...
Jay-Z's 'Made in America' music festival September 2012.
18.5.12
Currently Reading: The Social Animal
"On a broader scale, people don't just connect; the compete to connect. We compete against one another to win the prestige and respect and attention that will help us bond with one another. We seek to surpass one another in earning one another's approval. That's the logic of our complicated game"
-David Brooks (p. 213)
-David Brooks (p. 213)
11.5.12
5.5.12
4.5.12
1.5.12
#nowplaying
Even now I can smell the clothes
Freshly from the wash
Still hot from the dryer
Even now I can smell your skin
To wrap you in a towel
Lay you on the bed
And try to love you
Even now I can feel your arms
I can feel your breast
I can hear your songs
And I always can find you again
Even now I can feel your hand
Gently over mine
With almost no weight at all
Even now I can feel your eyes
Watch me as I strum
Much too late at night
Even now I can see you smile
I can hear you hum
I can hear you sing
And I always can find you again
Even in the dark of night
Even in the lowest light
Even as the world outside
Is spinning, and spinning
Even now I can feel your hair
Blow across my cheek
As we sit in one of two chairs
Even now I can feel your face
Resting on my chest
Wrestling for sleep
And failing at it
Even now I can see you sleep
I can see you dream
I can see you fly
And I always can find you again
And I always can find you again
And I always can find you again
Freshly from the wash
Still hot from the dryer
Even now I can smell your skin
To wrap you in a towel
Lay you on the bed
And try to love you
Even now I can feel your arms
I can feel your breast
I can hear your songs
And I always can find you again
Even now I can feel your hand
Gently over mine
With almost no weight at all
Even now I can feel your eyes
Watch me as I strum
Much too late at night
Even now I can see you smile
I can hear you hum
I can hear you sing
And I always can find you again
Even in the dark of night
Even in the lowest light
Even as the world outside
Is spinning, and spinning
Even now I can feel your hair
Blow across my cheek
As we sit in one of two chairs
Even now I can feel your face
Resting on my chest
Wrestling for sleep
And failing at it
Even now I can see you sleep
I can see you dream
I can see you fly
And I always can find you again
And I always can find you again
And I always can find you again
-Dashboard Confessional
Even Now
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