"Isn't It a Pity"

Isn't it a pity,

Now isn't it a shame?

How we break each other's hearts

And cause each other pain.

How we take each others love,

Without thinking anymore.

Forgetting to give back,

Isn't it a pity?

Somethings take too long

but how do I explain?

That not too many people

Can see we're all the same.

And because of all their tears

their eyes can't hope to see

The beauty that surronds them,

In't it a pity?

Isn't it a pity,

Now isn't it a shame?

How we break each other's hearts

and cause each other pain.

How we take each others love,

without thinking anymore.

Forgetting to give back

Isn't it a pity?

George Harrison - 1970

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2_Mq9gNaEM

Marina Keegan - A Light in the Darkness

KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness

Marina Keegan '12. Photo by Facebook.
                       

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.

Rooftop: I generally remain comfortably ensconed about 2 days behind on almost everything these days. But this is one item which I missed, and if you haven't seen or read it yet, I really wanted to share with you. Rather than preface it with any comment, I chose to simply cut and paste it right from the Facebook posting. In it, I believe, are the hopes and dreams of  the entire world. I hope that everyone will read them somewhere, and then try to live them. RIP Marina Keegan, and thank you for the wonderful piece of yourself which you have left behind. Most people live a lifetime without leaving anything at all....

Davidson Community School's Holocaust Memorial

I never know what I am going to do when I wake up each day. Aside from emergency situations that pop up here and there, I am largely at my leisure. When I read this mornings paper I saw that the Community School of Davidson was having a Holocaust Memorial Exhibit for the next few days. It sounded intriguing so I figured I’d check it out.

To begin with, I was kind of surprised that the Community School of Davidson would be having this event. No real reason for my surprise, I just thought of them as an elite school and accordingly, and incorrectly as it turns out, to place no real emphasis on social issues. I love it when I’m wrong. Leason learned.

These kids spent two weeks, or more, preparing the exhibit. Upon first entering you are given a guide, in my case it was Lauren Best, a 6th grade student at the school. She was animated and well informed in her presentation. The diagram shows the route and nature of the exhibits. The journey begins with Propaganda and moves onto Kristalnacht, the November 1938 “Night of Glass”, considered by many to be the beginning of the Holocaust.

From there the exhibit moves on to the Warsaw Ghetto, where in October of 1940 the Jews of Warsaw were restricted to a small area of the city and basically allowed to starve. The exhibit was done by creating a small alcove into a replica of a typical ghetto apartment. Remember, these kids were working with construction paper and magic markers, and yet the effect was claustrophobic. It was very effective work.

The Railcar was a particularly useful tool for realizing the cramped conditions and sheer inhumanity of the deportations. First there is a square foot marked off in the hall outside the exhibit into which you are asked to stand with 5 other people. That’s what the Jews experienced on their way to the concentration camps. It was unnerving for 5 minutes, think of the reality of it for an average of 2 days, without food or water. No sanitary facilities; stripped of all belongings except for the clothes on your back.

The Auschwitz Camp and Anne Franks’ hidden apartment were also displayed with great effect. The use of photographs and even laptops added to the availability of the presentations. The lighting was subdued and managed to add an appropriately tangible darkness to the subject.

There was a small exhibit about Oskar Schindler and Rabbi Gerber’s Red Shoes, as well as a section of children’s art depicting replica’s of the art work done by the children interred at the Terezin Concentration Camp.

This exhibit was important in many ways, but chiefly it was comforting to know that the Holocaust will not be forgotten, it cannot be ignored. And these kids prove it. My thanks to Davidson Community School for their efforts on behalf of tolerance. And thanks to Lauren Best for her time and a very insightful tour.