As spring unfolds and the '15s storm campus, my paternalistic impulse is kicking in. The prospies are venturing into what is likely one of their first collegiate experiences, particularly the seedy underbelly of Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights at the College. Students strike a delicate balance between what we do in the dark and how we conduct ourselves in the light. It's hard to find the right balance, and some of the more messed up mistakes have the potential to trouble us for years.
Listen up '15s college presents a chance to reboot your old self and search for what you want to do and who you want to be. You've got a clean slate. Real life is starting right about now. Inevitably, choices will be made both intentionally and accidentally. Things will happen beyond your control. The overarching narrative we begin to create here in college orders this chaos and is projected onto future actions. Clearly, morality matters. If grounded in solid foundations, life can be lived happily and meaningfully. If a life teeters on a moral quagmire, we risk wandering aimlessly and joylessly through existence. So how is a solid foundation formed? The answer I've found might not ring true for everyone, but I think it is true for me living life with integrity can make all the difference.
By integrity, I don't mean perfection. The fact is, no one is or needs to be close to perfect. Rather, we should strive to be decent human beings who care and think about others as well as ourselves. Free-riding is an idea beaten to death in almost every academic department, but it is an important concept nonetheless. Each of us rides on the backs of those before us who have truly cared to improve this world for the collective good. Philosophies predicated on hedonism and self-indulgence don't often persist because their very nature creates factional groupings of individuals. Communities that intend on lasting like Dartmouth need cohesive bonds of integrity to hold them together, endure and grow.
This is not a particularly popular notion. I'm not claiming it is fun to think about the common good and how your actions impact others. But for one second, think about a store greeter. The ones who actually give a shit and plaster smiley-face stickers on others' breast pockets with pride. Those guys do their job with integrity. People notice that. They might get called naive for believing that what they do is meaningful, but people like that make the world turn. For each person who behaves with such integrity thinking about how their actions impact others and comporting themselves accordingly we all live a little bit happier.
Contributing and constructing give life meaning in a way that taking and destroying don't. Living life with integrity, self-respect and a philosophy predicated on helping out is not often praised on this campus, or anywhere. People who help and care still make mistakes just like everyone else. They fail and they are yelled at. They succeed, receive a smattering of praise and then are yelled at again.
Yet I've come to believe that a life of integrity is worth all the difficulty it might engender. Having a strong moral core is worth it. Try. Care. Help others. In integrity, perhaps we can find meaning and happiness. At the very least, next year's pledges won't have so much trash to clean up.
