“You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” Wise words for such a silly old bear. Sophomore year has materialized as a boulder before me that has underscored my liminal place here at Boston University. I’m on the threshold of concluding the halfway mark and although that bears far less foreboding than the seniors now entering the big, dark recess of a black hole, where men become old and tired and woman get gray hair, that we call the real world, it comes with its own realizations bursting from the honey pumping pipes of this sweet collegiate dream.
The heading of my column this semester has been a well-intentioned reach back to my childhood and its relevance in the reality of the world in which I found myself when I left the corner of my Midwestern forest for the modern jungle of Boston’s cobblestone streets. The very first person of my graduating class I met here at BU has become a very close friend of mine, a fact I never could have foretold on that rainy orientation weekend (despite even my highly developed fifth and a half sense. I see dying people).
This crazy-insane, Disney heart, head-in-the-clouds, fluff in the ears, honey-grumbling-stomach of a friend decided one day, upon her own epiphany, that I was for all intents and purposes, Christopher Robin, a persona on a long list of nicknames that I gladly accepted. And from that notion, a large part of my world came into focus. I can hardly same I am the center of any one person’s life as Christopher is often for his friends in the Hundred Acre Woods, but what I can say is that those friends are at the center of mine.
Although my columns have covered numerous topics, traversing the globe (literally), one of the few constants have been the input of my friend, the touches they have made on my poor, impressionable psyche (you should be ashamed of yourselves). These topics, ideas and conversations would not be possible without them. Just as friendship has been a theme of my pieces before, I believe that on some large subconscious level the relationships we have are the driving force in most peoples’ lives. The fuel that keeps us saying “I think I can, I think I can” midway through the all-nighter research paper from hell with a midterm on the side. Waiter, summer please!
This magical land of columns is born in the shared fantasy of my relations with others. Be it their critiques of the general populace for our zombie-like addictions to cellular phones or the lawless walking we pursue, their complaints about our “overworked” minds that fight to procrastinate under the warmth of a spring day or simply the inside jokes that seems to storm any weather, my friends have left me with a mind open to the possibilities of the constantly expanding world beneath my feet.
Another friend of mine and former columnist for The FreeP wrote her final piece last spring about a love story with a particular freshman floor in Warren Towers (12B). As she saw we would all be living in different places the following year, she hypothesized the changes it would create for us all as we broadened our horizons but I don’t think any of us could have predicted the twists and turns sophomore year would bring to our relationships. It’s 3:16, do you know where your friends are?
Although I see some of them on a regular basis and others appear as pleasant blips on my outdated radar screen, no matter how far we travel or how much we grow up, there will always be a special place that we can go. It may not be on a hill or in a forest and it’s certainly not some fantasy (though it may seem that way at times) but it is somewhere only we know. But like any great place, or sweet jar of honey, we are always happy to share with the budding blossoms of our new friends and acquaintances.
And that’s what congregating in the streets of Boston in the dark of night on Sunday, singing “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye” and chanting “USA!” is all about, really. Remove the politicization that the greedy hypocrites on Capitol Hill are sure to embellish in hopes of furthering their careers, remove the fact that people are reveling in the death of an individual (no matter how justified), remove the debates and arguments on how we should react to what’s going on and you’re left with a pure thought, a torrent of real emotions: the desire for community.
Although society deplores and scoffs at mob mentality with fear and disdain, this desire to be with others and share in their experience is a reality of everyday life and it isn’t always something to run away from. We may be taught from an early age to swim against the current and find our own path, but the fish that leaves the school is often the one swimming right into a pack of killer whales. I mean, if “Free Willy” has taught us something, it’s that you don’t try to keep a killer whale away from its family and friends.
It’s the reason people join clubs, do sports, and pray to some mystical spirit in the great beyond, to feel connected on some larger level, something beyond our individual abilities. On May 1st, we were once again able to celebrate what it means to be an American, mobilizing an extraordinary number of people across the entire nation. Although nothing had been planned and there certainly wasn’t some governmental coordination of the celebration, people will always remember the night they shared in this emotional community, even if they were hundreds of miles away.
“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” Although Pooh may be filled with fluff (and honey), he is oftentimes the wisest of the wise and certainly more intelligent than perhaps I will ever be, no matter how many degrees I get or courses I take. Boston has become, for me, the bottom rail of life’s bridge, from which I can watch as one of the most awesomest magicaler fine-freaking-fantastic rivers flows slowly and sometimes all too quickly beneath me.
So as summer comes and we all go our separate ways once again, turning toward the shrinking years of college stretching out before us with length that now seems daunting in its miniature size, I recommend you take every chance you get to sit with friends, drink some tea and add a bit of honey. It’s those moments that make college the best four years of your life and it’s those people that you’ll have with you forever, in the sour lemon and huge birch trees that line your very own Hundred Acre Column, the stories of your life.
I believe Tigger said it best: “TTFN: Ta ta for now.”
David Fontana is a sophomore at the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for the Daily Free Press. He can be reached at fontad5@bu.edu.
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