Five Stories.

For some inexplicable reason, I was chosen to be one of the student speakers at the 126th Commencement of The Taft School on May 29th, 2016, otherwise known as 'graduation'. I've been at Taft, which is in Watertown, Connecticut, for about nine months after having spent four-and-a-half years at my old secondary school, Maru-a-Pula, which is Gaborone, Botswana. It's been an interesting academic year to say the least. Here's what I had to say:

"I am going to tell you five stories.

Story No. One:

It’s lights out and you’re not in your room. You know for certain everyone else is asleep. You’ve crawled into the artificial gleam of the bathroom stalls, having creeped out of your bed sheets without waking up your roommate. You are lonely, you are tired, you are hungry, you are sad and the world is some irretrievable thing that you can find only here, with your razor pressed against your thigh. You are a dream you are a nightmare you are human it is snowing outside. You remember that walk to the Health Center when the leaves were still burning and flickering orange and red and yellow between the trees and between your feet. You remember how difficult it was to get into your stride while everyone else walked with some sort of purpose with some place to be.  You remember how the mirror tells you that this hopelessness is yours and yours alone, but the mirror can only see what is in front of it. It can’t see everything else- the subtleties of the magazines with people who you cannot possibly look like because their three-dimensional imperfections have been air-brushed into 2-D swimsuit covers; the supreme difficulty of picking the right options at the dining hall because eating well feels like a war of guilt and regret instead of a basic human dignity; and finally, the crude unfairness of feeling that these are your solitary and singular visions and reflections which no one else can see. Yet you are everywhere, nameless but familiar and common and special. You are something, you are someone, you are alone, you are not. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are whole and not just a story.

Story No. Two:

You are new. Maybe from somewhere far away and strange and perhaps even unpronounceable. You walk a little funny, you walk a little slow. It looks like a college, it looks like a castle, it looks like... You are misty-eyed and wonderful and flabbergasted and the polished, grey-brick prep-school pathways smell musky and old and vaguely of cinnamon.  It seems very big. You seem very small. You try not to think of stranger-danger PSAs when one of your teachers first offers to have lunch with you. You leave that lunch not with the hope that maybe that teacher will grade you a bit less harshly but with the hope that maybe you can have lunch with him or her again and laugh about that one time in college when he or she did that crazy thing that briefly made you wonder if he or she is really meant to be a teacher - though, everyone is young once upon a time. This is your once upon a time, you think, as you walk across the polished grey-brick prep-school pathways that smell musky and old and vaguely of cinnamon and you feel like anything can happen. You are invincible, you are limitless, you contain multitudes.  You are the blue in the sky, the green in the leaves, the red and blue in the school logo- you are proud and happy and romantic and gay and strong and young. Your eyes gleam a little as the sun sets and the stars dance.


Story No. Three:

You haven’t slept for three days straight- at least not quite- you don’t know if what little you’ve had actually counts. Your laptop is in front of you. Your fingers grind away at the keyboard as your write your umpteenth thesis statement this month and prepare to organize your thoughts into five neat paragraphs- you decide that the third paragraph will focus on irony. You are good at this. Your teachers know this, your parents know this, your friends know this; you do not. The cup of coffee in your hand gives you the illusion that you are ready and confident to beat this world into submission, but you are too fast, too steady, and too carefully placed into your corner of this life. You find you cannot fight the revolutions of the world because you revolve with it- and so day turns into night as one paper turns into the next as one quiz turns into the next as one test turns into the next. At the library, you do not explore the bookshelves; you do not wonder, you do not wander into some other journey whose map and compass is not on your syllabus. You sit in your cubicle, you put on your headphones and you do what you are told. You are not at fault- this is just how it is- but things aren’t quite feeling right and you can feel it stirring ever-so-slightly in your chest. You look at your schedule and note the necessities. You are not at fault- this is just how it is- you are breathing but not living. The bell rings. You walk out the library.

Story No. Four:

You are on stage.  You dance a dance that no one else has ever danced before. You sing a song that no one else has ever sung before. You make a speech that no one else has ever spoken before. The boys with the collars holler in approval and the deepness of their voices has a resonance that makes you dance with a certain grace. The girls in their spring dresses scream out your name in a way that makes you sing a little smoother. The faculty with their class-folders look at you with a very specific sort of pride that makes you speak with a voice you never thought you had. You are on stage- not some other shadow of self-pity that you thought was you, not some other whisper of self-consciousness you believed was you- You are on stage. And, because of that, the following things don’t matter: that someone who doesn’t love you has touched your hair again because of the way it kinks and curls and revels in its nappiness; that someone who doesn’t love you has denied you of your right to shout I am brown I am wonderful or I am I woman I am free or I am African I am proud or whatever it is that makes your heart beat the way it does... You are on stage and you are loved and you are needed and that stage just happens to be all of this world- where the only curtain that can stop you from being you is your own. 

Story No. Five:

It is the evening of the senior dance at the headmaster’s house near campus. You are with another commencement speaker and you are climbing something that you shouldn’t be climbing. There is a wooden board purposefully entangled with chains blocking the beginning of the stairs. You slide over it and make your way up the highest structure on the stands in the football field where they put the overhead lights on. It is dark, it is wonderful, it is spring. You and the other commencement speaker joke about how tragic and funny it would be if the both of you fell to your deaths two nights before graduation. You think it is exceptionally inexplicable you have been chosen by your classmates to speak to them and for them and about them- you are nevertheless honoured and grateful and happy and anxious and proud. At this high point in the football field, the both of you gaze at the distant light of the school windows at night and you breathe in and then sigh. It is both the beginning and the end of the world, you think as you breathe in another breath and then sigh another sigh. It is dark, it is wonderful, it is spring. You ask each other if you know what you will talk about yet. You both say no. You look at the distant lights of the school windows- each window containing its own little story- and you think: You have no big lessons to say you learned, you have no grandiloquent life advice to offer, you have no ancient wisdom to impart- and you are tired with reciting platitudes. All you have are stories to tell and people to tell them to. You are certain that these stories are enough, for people will take from them what they will and what they must and what they need.  You are certain that these stories are enough, for you will take from them what you will and what you must and what you need.

I love you all. Thank you."

***

Photo credit to Rob Falcetti and The Taft School

An Adventure with the Buddha in Connecticut.

Hi all. I had an assignment for my Buddhism class which asked us to compare our journey to The Taft School with that of the protagonist of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and also with the Buddha himself. Anyhow, here's a little summary of my adventures in American prep-school through the lens of Buddhist philosophy. Have fun. 

An Adventure with the Buddha in Connecticut.

I.

“We know that egotism is a bad thing; we know that all the great world traditions- not just Buddhism- urge us to transcend our selfishness. But when we seek liberation- in either a religious or a secular guise- we really want to enhance our own sense of self.” – Karen Armstrong, ‘Buddha’

Now that it’s started snowing, I’ll go ahead and tell you about my little journey here and somehow link it to The Buddha. Before I begin, I have a thousand apologies to make but I’ll just mention two of them. One: I’m sorry for the horribly colloquial tone of this paper, but the assignment called for a personal response- and, unfortunately, what I feel is far less nuanced than what I think. Two: this assignment also asked about our goals and I’m sorry to say that I’ve already failed in fulfilling the goals of my little journey here... But that’s okay. It’s started snowing and that means I can finally get around to talking about my little journey here, so-

Here we go.

II.

“Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him”- Hermann Hesse, ‘Siddhartha’

My favourite poets used to hang around in New England, especially at Harvard- and so did a few of my favourite scientists and philosophers. So when I, a Lower-Sixth Form student at Maru-a-Pula School, was selected as part of the US Scholars to come to Taft, I relished my luck to pursue the footsteps of my American legends. I saw it as my great chance to chase the legacies of Cummings, of Eliot, of Ashbery- and even Thomas Kuhn- the radical philosopher of science who graduated from both Taft and Harvard. This may sound all terribly simplistic and hackneyed and pretentious but this was essentially what I thought the purpose of my life to be: just like every other one of my peers that I have learned to criticize for sharing such similar, basic fantasies: go to college, get my degree, pursue a career that I can be violently successful in. For a long time, I deluded myself with thinking that my version of this surface goal-chasing was deeper than everyone else’s- after all, I was dreaming of getting a PhD in physics and/or philosophy and/or literature and becoming a poorly paid academic who would write books and give lectures and be well-known for looking like Cornel West but instead be from Africa. There were a few rare moments where I would pause to think that I was, perhaps, being a raging hypocrite. I figured that craving for success was lofty and admirable because my desires lay in books and art rather than in money and land. I became very good at ignoring the fact that my desperate wanting, my lusty craving to be ever-more intelligent was essentially and fundamentally the same as buying individually tailored suits and trading stock prices. But still! I was coming to the land of Big Dreams, to America itself, and Taft was my orgasmic green light at the other side of the world; the Daisy to my Gatsby and that was all that mattered.

The really sad part is that I knew all along that I was full of it.

III.

“Without knowing it, he had endeavoured and longed all these years to be like these other people, like these children, and yet his life had been much more wretched and poorer than theirs, for their arms were not his, nor their sorrows his... Were they not playing a game without end? Was it necessary to live for it? No. This game was called Samsara, a game for children,  a game which was perhaps enjoyable played once, twice, ten times- but was it worth playing continually?” ­–Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

Underneath my excitement for America was a dark sense of unease. In the land of dreams, people who looked like me were being shot for looking like me; people who didn’t look like me were losing their jobs because other people who looked even less like me were controlling the economy; on the TV screen a president who almost looks like me was wrinkling and greying because all these people still can’t get over the fact that they don’t look like each other. Meanwhile the Harvard website spoke of this strange oddity called ‘opportunity’ while their acceptance rates plummeted annually. I spent more than a few hours refreshing the Taft website wondering whether their words had double-meanings as well and further wondered about the casual messiness of the world around me. In Botswana, I was beginning to hear hints of the same globalized double-speak of ‘opportunity’ as the wealth-gap between citizens increased. I was moving on from one private school to the next, one ‘opportunity’ to the next; and the only thing that I started appreciating about my opportunities was the fact that I only had to theorize about the casual messiness of the world around me rather than directly experience it. But still, even at a distance I could tell something was off with the reality I was living in. Was I so special that I deserved to be given a scholarship to Taft while some of my friends wondered and still wonder how they’ll pay for university? Was I so special that my parents were able to afford the tuition of my old private-school in Botswana which led to my scholarship to Taft when my government’s educational funding becomes increasingly out-of-reach for my friends? And then the biggest questions of them all- my little brother and my high school poetry-prodigy friend both died before they had the chance to be further offended by the ugly suffering of this reality: does my survival make me more special than them? Obviously not- so why the hell am I here in Connecticut watching snow fall on the ground when they aren’t? And how the hell am I supposed to continue living in the nonsensical pain of this meaningless world?

Why is it that we call samsara ‘opportunity’?

IV.

“...he was still plagued by desire and still immersed in the toils of consciousness. He had begun to wonder if the sacred Self was a delusion. He was, perhaps, beginning to think that it was not a helpful symbol of the eternal, unconditioned Reality he sought. To seek an enhanced Self might even endorse the egotism that he needed to abolish.” – Karen Armstrong, “Buddha”.

I mentioned earlier that I failed in fulfilling the goals of my journey here. While my goals changed shiftlessly in the murky wind of my mind, I still failed to reach any one of them. The most obvious (and most pathetic) goal was to get into Harvard. The other goal was then not to care about getting into Harvard or not (ongoing; also pathetic). Another was to make High Honors. Yet another was to finally finish my first collection of poetry, ‘First Adventures in Adolescent Heartbreak’ (also pathetic). Yet another goal was to learn how to forgive myself for harbouring such awkwardly elitist goals while being a self-proclaimed humanist. And then  there was the goal to finally kill of my awkward elitist goals so I could become an actual humanist, rather than a self-proclaimed one. I was also supposed to call my mother every Sunday and stay in contact with my friends. Write delicate, philosophical and self-effacing poetry about the trees in New England. Do my physics homework. Hand in assignments on time. Go the gym. Find myself. Love myself. Try not to get over-involved with the black struggle.

All of them: failed.

V.

“But today he only saw one of the river’s secrets, one that gripped his soul. He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this? He did not understand it; he was only aware of a dim suspicion, a faint memory, divine voices.” –Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

There’s one more goal that I want to talk about. It was the reason I signed up Honors Humanities, for Philosophy and eventually, for Buddhism. Also, this is the part of the essay where I actually relate my experience to Siddartha and the Buddha. I didn’t mention this goal earlier because I would be lying to you if I said that I came to America with the explicit purpose of fulfilling this particular goal in mind. Rather, I became very skilled at convincing myself that the reason I came to America was for the sake of adventure. Adventure. That’s the word I had in my head when my visa came through and when my Taft acceptance letter came through and when it started snowing. It’s the same word I’ve had in mind with every conversation and every book I’ve read here. I’ve referred to adventure in various forms, all awkward and needlessly intellectualized to make it seem like a bigger deal that it actually is. Last semester, in our Philosophy classed I called this adventure the ‘space between the physical and the metaphysical realms’. This semester, Siddhartha calls it ‘Atman’ and Gotama calls it the ‘Self.’ I chose not to include this goal in the preceding sections of this essay because I earnestly believe that the quest for this mysterious adventure is separate from the samsara I’ve been trapped in since birth- much of these entrapments of suffering being self-constructed. And I really, really, really do believe that this is the case otherwise I wouldn’t have saved this section for last. I wish I could give a better reason than that, but, like I said earlier, what I feel is far less nuanced than what I think. Yet even if feeling is less nuanced than thought (which you know I think I know is true), the unfiltered quality of feeling can be nurtured into thought. The depthlessness of my academic success-chasing still could not kill this implicit and fundamental goal of adventure that I had in my mind when coming to Taft. Even if my philosophical ponderings about the nature of life and being are not the actual occupations of my feelings- for I have spent a great deal lying to myself thinking that they are- they, in essence, remain the true occupation of my feelings; for it is these same ponderings of faith and wonder that have kept me alive in the shameless samsara of America. I don’t know how else to unpack this argument, but this simplification might help: I came to America saying that what I wanted was adventure; but what I really wanted was a Harvard acceptance later;  but what I really wanted even if I thought I was lying to myself about it was actually the adventure because that’s the only goal that survives failure because it never ends.

VI.

“He had begun to wonder if the sacred Self was a delusion. He was perhaps, beginning to think that it was not a helpful symbol of the eternal, unconditioned reality he sought. To seek an enhanced Self might even endorse the egotism that he needed to abolish. Nevertheless Gotama had not lost hope. He was still certain that it was possible for human beings to reach the final liberation of enlightenment.” – Karen Armstrong, ‘Buddha’.

I don’t expect to ever reach Nirvana and I’m not trying to. I am, however, curious about whether such a thing exists or not. Does Nirvana look like Plato’s World of Ideas?  Does Nirvana have shape or form? Does the ‘Nothingness’ of Nirvana constitute Somethingness? You see, unless I stop asking these sorts of questions, and I promise I won’t, I’m probably not going to experience the brilliant hyper-consciousness hiding away in the folds of space-time. That’s fine with me- I think too much and I’m happy with that. My fundamental disagreement with The Buddha thusly lies here: I don’t want the experience of Nirvana, I want the proof of Nirvana.  But then again, that’s what I think; not what I feel.

What if...