all is optional

The New Year, for most intents and purposes, has come and gone. The only reason we really care about the famed day is because of foolish notions of sorting out our neatly pre-packaged lives. (Most of you call them resolutions and they usually have something to do with losing weight.) So, when fifty-six percent of a recently polled female population said they would much rather be thinner than smarter, I deduced that New Year’s was more of a girl-y holiday than Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t stop at that. It’s a holiday celebrated mostly for our escapist generation, one which would much rather fix the minor individual programs than think on a greater, more selfless scale.

Instead of trying to find the perfect swimsuit that accentuates your figure while guzzling down beer after beer during Spring Break (Cancun edition), our generation needs to take note of its degenerating lifestyle. However, a simple realisation of how we are losing the fight against our own rights does no good if we are not willing to do something, or even any thing, about it.

“The world’s stupid optimism must be shaken to the base. We must face the ugly truth as well as the beautiful, we must give the bitter and nasty truth a chance to wrestle with the sweet and lovely lie…

If religion will not do its work, if science fears to draw its conclusions, the bold, the fearless spirit of artistic genius must (perhaps) go down in the mud to clear the way for the advance it needs must have, and which it cannot get from its servants” - Lincoln Steffens (1891)”

Our education does not and should always take place within the confines of a windowless Pace University classroom. If your professors are not facilitating progressive intellectual discussions like you would want them to, then it is your duty to take the initiative to make those discussions happen in the hallways, in parks, on the Brooklyn Bridge.

your guilty pleasure of Wednesday night television or whichever day you might prefer on your 500 channel television set is not freedom of choice. It is confinement. We are our worst oppressors because we are buying into this façade of freedom. Turn off the television; pick up the newspaper (and I don’t mean Page Six). There are too many among us who decide that it is okay for us to perpetuate escapism in our own lives because there are enough people out there who do care about current events. What you are forgetting is each and every thing any of us does is political, whether you like or not. Stop trying to escape from it and do some thing, anything.

For starters, become involved in the world around you by volunteering. the Centre for Community Outreach is sponsoring a trip to New Orleans where you will be able to help with various projects to restore shelters and traditional housing. Next, read up on members of Congress who are up for re-election this year. Get involved with their campaigns.

The fog is only as real as you want it to be.

Originally published in the February 2006 edition of the Pforzheimer Honors College newsletter (NYC campus).

Little Italy served as the backdrop to a colorful painting of love - new and old - that night in June. There was a wedding reception happening as we ambled down the street. First we, like normal pedestrians every where else, walked on the crowded sidewalks, some times single file, some times as a cohesive entity. It was loud and bright but it didn’t bother me. It made me feel alive. Every person, every trinket, every natural object gave off an aura of happiness - absolute delight that it existed, in this moment, in this wonderful city.

We walked aimlessly from one side of the street to the other, stopping randomly to point out something or the other to one of our fellows. We stopped for ices and gelatto. He hoisted me on to his shoulders so I could see the bride and groom taking pictures, surrounded by loving, doting family members who embodied everything Italian.

And somewhere along the way, our friends disappeared. They were off further down the street, I suppose. The music was still as loud as ever and the lights just as bright. We stood in the middle of the street and it felt as if we were the only two people left on Earth. You could see the stars in the Manhattan sky that night, I remember, only because he had pointed them out to me. He stood directly in front of me, told me his heart was racing, asked me to listen and so I obliged. It was racing. I looked up at him and smiled. He asked if his hanging around me all day had bothered me. He would bugger off if I asked. A bit taken back, I defensively replied, “No way, you aren’t bothering me at all.” He smiled back at me. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.¹

Looking back upon the still frame photograph of that night in my mind, I see myself - an insecurely secure girl, wearing khakis and a black shirt, lovely dark brown caressing her face as a slight wind breezes past her on a humid summer night, looking up at a boy, a boy who told her that she made his heart race - and in that moment, I swear we were infinite. ²

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
2. Stephen Chobsky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower