I read a news headline the other day without looking closely at the source. It sounded absurd. It was only after I had re-read the headline several times that I realized that my thinking it as another satirical, Onion-type article was wrong and that it was, in fact, true. When the news becomes outrageous enough to not immediately believe, when sensationalism and untruths are not immediately and fervently regarded as such, when Saturday Night Live doesn’t have to try, it is a lot of things, if not incomprehensible and frustrating (and apparently, maybe necessarily, funny).
In an effort to keep with the theme of this column—writing about the thoughts, feelings and exasperation that come with life at Lawrence and the idea of moving on (presumably forward, although that is clearly TBD), it certainly feels trivial to pick something small to write on within our insular community, when the scope of our focus is necessarily so much bigger. It is hard to poke fun at the everyday, to drone on about the mundane, when it is precisely those fears that we assuage in doing so that seem more real than they have before.
I decided instead to recognize that difficulty, to tow the line of uncertainty, to realize that this sort of incredulousness and lack of certainty is not just mine alone. This is a recognition of where I find myself in the midst of sixth week, winter term and life at Lawrence, a reflection that is more “real” (since we’re unsure about this word now, apparently) than a few hundred words about something that I couldn’t care less about. I don’t speak for anyone else, nor do I pretend to know whether or not one is consumed by the implications of their identity in the day-to-day or can blissfully hide within the confines of bound books and un-debated problem sets—but although we find ourselves on a such a wide spectrum, we can probably all put our feelings somewhere on the same line, and that is a start.
