“Livin’” well

Last Sunday, I participated in a little discussion group/lecture type thing called “How You Livin’?” Apologies to you readers for including references to my exciting social life in this column for another week. You must be thinking, “First Quidditch, and now a discussion group/lecture-type thing? This guy must be the life of the party!” Yes, true. Moving on.

The premise of this “How You Livin’?” event was very simple. It’s all in the title. You talk about yourself, and you listen to others talk about themselves. But wait! Before you say, “I do that everyday, and it’s the worst!” I should tell you the speeches given have nothing to do with how much homework someone has or how so-and-so told so-and-so something about such-and-such or any of those other things that can horribly taint the marvelous world of dinner conversation. At “How You Livin’?” which will return in January for its third installment, you get to watch people struggle to explain themselves. Fully. It’s very entertaining. And you can even take part if you’d like …

Of course, “very entertaining” is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of describing the event. I won’t take time here to summarize “How You Livin?” since it’s already being covered in this issue of the Campus, but my take on the event is that it’s about learning to appreciate yourself by realizing that the seemingly insignificant people around you — like the ones you notice only because they take literally hours to put sprinkles on their Proctor “strawbary” ice-cream — have very interesting things going on in their head.

I suppose talking about yourself may not be very appealing. It wasn’t all that enticing to me for one reason: I’ve seen the “How did you get here?” section of the Middlebury homepage. That little box on the right-hand side of www.middlebury.edu continually makes me want grab the precious writing utensil from the Incessant Pen Tapper next to me and shove it into one of my major arteries. This isn’t a criticism of the people featured in the blurbs or Middlebury Public Affairs but an observation about the sheer inanity of life stories. How many life stories have we been subjected to from print, radio and television? Blurbs on the Web site like, “Gosh, I’m just a normal kid from the suburbs” or “I’m an example of Middlebury diversity! See picture to the right in which you may note that I am not white” just don’t seem that remarkable. I remember that somehow, I wasn’t even impressed by that guy who cut off his own leg to survive a spelunking accident or something a couple years back. What does this say about our culture of desensitization?

This is an issue for a different time, I guess, but I can say that participating in “How You Livin’?” gave me a renewed sense of appreciation for the human struggle and our own need to rationalize our actions. And I got all this from listening to a bunch of lucky Middlebury kids like me talk about our comparably pathetic struggles! I know this speaks to the pathetic dearth of Genuine Human Experience in my life, but I certainly would have wept if that one-legged spelunking guy had made a guest appearance. There was just something about real people being there in front of me talking openly about their experience, without framing narrative by Stone Phillips and an accompanying interview with Katie Couric.

Although I didn’t realize it until now, this column is a cheap advertisement for active engagement, both in the world of Middlebury College and the world outside of it. Almost four years ago, as a first-year student, I didn’t know which end was up, and I devoted all of my free time to trying to find various selfish amusements that I thought would make me happy (e.g. beer, drugs, terrible Family Guy DVDs). In fact, using the phrase “as a first-year student” is a bit disingenuous, since I still find myself chasing selfish amusements a good amount of the time. It’s what we’ve been taught to do, I think. But the first step to getting over this addiction is realizing that most often, it feels far better to engage another human being in a conversation over what is at the heart of their being. Because when we start to comprehend, to feel in an illogical way, how interesting, talented and important to us the people around us are, we can’t help but to start living intentionally and beautifully. Cue heart-rending violins.

Basically, if we treat other people as if they’re important, we’ll be able to treat ourselves the same way. There are several discussion-based groups, initiatives, and publications on campus (most of them founded by seniors who have realized time here is short), so e-mail me (seriously, do it) and I’ll direct you to them.