A preface to lunch Power and powerlessness - I have no idea what I'm doing

Author: James O'Brien

Throughout the storied history of my unfortunate column in The Middlebury Campus, I have struggled with how to write an opinion column without having any opinions. As a result, I usually ended up pursuing some sort of polemical rant in order to produce an aggravated op-ed from a small but irate subsection of the student body. I confess - I was simply doing my duty so that our fine newspaper could have more op-eds to print. I now realize, however, that in this way I was contributing to a huge waste of paper and ink - an act which, if revealed, would incite more paper-wasting op-eds about how we are wasting paper. All this aside, I have finally found an opinion that I can stand behind - I have no idea what I am doing.

After attending Robert Sapolsky's excellent lecture on stress last Thursday, I asked myself a few questions designed to unburden my mind. Where are you going? What is it worth to get there? Aren't rhetorical questions irritating? Sadly, these questions actually added stress to my life. In attempting to evaluate what I have learned so far this year, the most profound idea that I could come up with is that I have no idea what I am doing here at Middlebury. It isn't that I wish I was somewhere else, because I think I need this four-year incubation period to figure out what I am doing with my life in general.

I assume that most of my classmates are either passionate about learning, on a career path or participating in a varsity sport that they love - and that they have problems they are hiding. I do not fall into these categories except for the last one. I used to think that I was passionate about learning, but I was just afraid of getting bad grades. I had been trained to believe in the power of grades and their ability to send us to the right college, which would send us to the right job and get us the right wife whose above-average fertility would lead to the right family, etc. Then last week I just happen to ask myself, "What are you doing?" Suddenly, I am not afraid of grades anymore, and that in itself scares me. I used to be scared into doing homework. Now I am trying to figure out what I actually want to do, and, sadly, I am at a loss.

Nonetheless, I have tried to bring my vague new perspective to the masses. The masses have not been receptive. I had a discussion with a friend over the word "procrastination" after she said that Bicentennial Hall is great for procrastination but not if you want to be productive. I don't like the word "productive" because I don't understand what we are supposed to be producing and who we are producing it for. Concurrently, the definition of procrastination is "to put off doing something." So technically socializing is procrastinating from homework. At the same time, I would like to say that doing homework is often procrastinating from the things we really want to do. Once we realize this, it seems like it would be easy to correct our mistake. Unfortunately, if you are like me, you have never understood or even cared about what you really want.

We all seem to be working toward or looking for a "point" to our actions. Most of the people I have talked to about this idea have a vague sense of purpose, but they do not exactly understand that purpose. I think we have to realize that life is not a linear progression toward a finish line, and, as we know, we will not find a place to stop and be satisfied even if we have high goals. We have to learn to define ourselves by who we are rather than what we do. I am not saying that life is "pointless," but it is purposeless, in a liberating sense. Nothing is required of us, and we are free to assign our own values to the things that we do.

We have the power to question and create. This ability falls under the jurisdiction of Spiderman's Uncle Ben and his "Great Freedom=Great Responsibility Postulate." It is a lot of pressure to find value in our own lives. It's far easier to accept the values of others or to pursue hand-me-down goals which we consider our own simply because they have never been questioned. Just writing that makes me a little nervous. Perhaps, Reader, you know what you are looking for. And after writing all these words, I have this strange feeling some mistake has been made. I want you to tell me what I want.

James O'Brien '10 is an English major from Medfield, Mass.