Concerning a Bit of Graffiti In the Sterling Carrels
Anyone who has sat in a study carrel in Sterling Memorial Library knows the graffiti: layers of notes, poems, crude drawings, and other musings written by students over the years. Some might reach out to you to say It’ll be ok. Some might express such intelligent sentiments as POOP :D. Some might quote philosophers, poets, or musicians. Some might be a name, or a year. Some might be written in languages you cannot understand. Some might express political sentiments. Such is the nature of graffiti: at once crude and profound, simplistic and complex, timeless and ephemeral, silly and serious.
I am sitting in a carrel right now, looking at such a display. I find it grounding, to spend a moment of my day reading what I can, as if it provides some link to those who came before me. Perhaps it helps me feel less alone. Perhaps it’s just a reason to procrastinate (perhaps that’s the only reason these notes get written in the first place). But one piece of graffiti has shaken me a bit today.
“I’m afraid I’m not making the most of this place” -10-26-09
↑”Backatcha” -11/17/09
↑”Ditto” -9/23/10
↑”Me too” 9/28/10
↑”Still real 4.5 years later” 3/30/14
↑”I think everyone thinks that.” 9/10/17
↑”I feel that.” -2-14-2020
On another part of the same wall.
↑”I don’t know if I’m doing this right. And I’m scared.” -09/07/2007
↑”We’re all scared...life is frightening.” -10/25/07
“Yes,” an ache in my chest said when I read that, even though I’ve only been here a month. Four weeks have slipped through my fingers, and I feel as though I’m already staring at my reflection in the future, seeing only disappointment in the eyes looking back at me. “Yes, that's exactly it. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid.” Why? Why are we all so afraid? Yes, the future is uncertain. But that is just the human condition. Not until the laws of time are understood will that change, and perhaps not even then. Perhaps in understanding, we will break something that cannot be repaired.
Because that’s what time does, doesn’t it? You age, you can’t go back. You die, you can’t go back. Sooner or later, everything decays with time. We are on a one-way ticket to the end; we are all asteroids, pulled along by the gravities of bodies larger than ourselves. And ironically, in that way life isn’t so uncertain after all. Except, even in the face of inevitability, there is uncertainty! There is mystery!
I have struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. That is almost not an exaggeration; my first memory of school is having a panic attack and hiding under a water fountain when I was five. They called it a tantrum, then. And even then, I was afraid.
So, from the thoughts of someone experienced in the ways of fear, I would like to present a speculation. Maybe the way to escape fear is not out, but through. Perhaps it is not a matter of finding tranquility, but accepting chaos. There is nothing in the unknown that will be any more dangerous once it is known. We can stand in the darkness of the nighttime forest of the future, and be at home.
What a weird, perhaps even absurd, thing it is to sit here, surrounded by knowledge, and be terrified of what is not known. It’s terrifying. It’s mystifying. It’s wonderful.
Because there were days where even less was known. There were days when our ancestors sat around fires and marveled at the light in the sky; there were days before even that when even fire was beyond us. There were days of even greater mystery. And there will be days beyond us of less mystery. It is both privilege and responsibility, burden and freedom, to live in an era of fear.
Most of this is more easily written than felt. My anxieties about being here, about living up to some idea of “making the most of this place,” are a lot more complicated than any words could express. I bet yours are too. I honestly think we probably give more weight to that idea than we should, but I don’t think even escaping that idea of success would free us of fear.
If we cannot escape fear—if it is something that will haunt student after student that sits in this chair—maybe the best we can do is accept it. That is not nothing. The best we can do is not nothing. So wonder, freely. Wonder, study, research, fear.
To quote another student on that same wall: “We’re all struggling together <3”
By Eli White.
