This may be the last column I write for The Dartmouth. A big thanks goes out to everybody editors, students, staff and citizens who lent their attention, in one way or another, to this rather ramshackle venture in amateur opinion writing.
During my time here, I've occasionally worried that I wasn't taking advantage of the "Dartmouth Experience." I failed to rush and pledge a frat, failed to join an "A-Side" a cappella group (I can snap my fingers really fast, actually), failed to swim naked across the Connecticut river you know what I mean. I remember that when I arrived here, the buildings seemed to shine with a perfect collegiate luster, as they still do on occasion, before becoming sunk in everyday-ness, in my own plodding insensitivity to the grandeur and romance of my environment.
But I realize now, four years on, that nothing could really ever have come from outside of me to make me more joyful or to entice me with romance and glamour. That came from an inner initiative one that had slunk away from me, returning in fits and sparks. It was my own responsibility to infuse my world with that luster, merely by looking at it through a keener eye, open to all the lightning colors that come zooming out of nature. But as it was, I often became jaded enough, seeing everything with such cynical accuracy that I allowed glory to pass away from the earth. (Fortunately, it never really passes away, as long as you are still able to notice it.)
Can Dartmouth sometimes seem to be a sterile wasteland, where the students are only interested in staving off their despair with substance abuse and fleetingly unromantic sexual encounters? Sure, sometimes. But what would be the point of constantly highlighting those unpleasant facts?
Like T.S. Eliot said, we "cannot bear very much reality." This world is a blank, pale screen onto which we project our own dreams and fantasies. That's what it's made for. The blank screen can't be criticized simply for being blank you're meant to fill it up and color it with a lot of quixotic wishes.
Never, my dear readers, cease to project your private worlds onto the public emptiness. Perfect your eye, your vision, your art. Your illusions, after all, are the really real reality. The other, everyday sort of reality is not much of anything.
I don't want to act like being 22 years old and graduating from college means that I actually have some kind of advice to give. I still cherish those moments when I looked and continue to look foolishly at the world with nave expectations, when it seemed all the more beautiful, dynamic and new. In the moments when I became cynical, I noticed everything with a harsh and brutal clarity no parties were interesting or exciting, no one had real conversations and it all boiled down to sexual warfare a la Charles Darwin.
But people and things deserve to be recognized as more than they first appear in the stark light of reality. They deserve the full investment of our imagination. This guy isn't just some meathead jerk and this girl isn't just his shrill, future trophy wife. They're Gatsby and Daisy, Antony and Cleopatra. What, after all, would be the point of seeing things as they really are? It's never made anybody happier maybe richer, but then again maybe not. I propose, purely out of a high romantic mood, that if we continue to invest in reality with great quantities of our own life, light and imaginative verve, it actually will become the way we've imagined it to be and not just the way it is. We will somehow step into our own vision.
We mustn't blame reality for failing to live up to our illusions. It tries to keep up as best it can. But we will always remain a little farther up the road, with the wind at our heels. Dartmouth College a magical land of classy old-fashioned fun, utopian social relations, unicorns and true love is a lost continent, still awaiting your discovery.
