Endings, Beginnings, & Dwelling in Possibility

& Marina Keegan on commencement

Hi friend,

All week I’ve been thinking about possibility. About what it looks like to dwell in possibility, as Emily Dickinson once wrote. How can we quiet the anxious mind? The one that’s all fear, all negativity bias, worrying about all the ways things could go sideways. The one that keeps us stuck, that makes us think we have to accept or resign ourselves to a fate we don’t want. How do we cultivate a sense of expansive, promising possibility instead? Rather than fixating on what could go wrong, how do we focus on what could go right?

What spurred this train of thought was something that happened last weekend: I got to re-experience my college graduation. Jon and I were invited by Brown University to receive honorary doctorates, and we traveled up to Providence with my parents for the ceremony, which took place on Sunday. I went in with zero expectations about what it would be like or how I would feel, and I was surprised at how moved I was by the whole thing. Looking out from the stage on this verdant green, on this sea of students who were all on the threshold of commencing, I scanned their faces and noticed one young woman beaming. She was clearly overjoyed.

The sea of faces (photo by Brown University)

But then just a few seats over, I saw one young woman who looked terrified—which is how I’m sure I looked at my graduation. The entire spring leading up to it, I felt panic, fear, and confusion about what was on the other side of that threshold. I wanted certainty. I wanted a convincing, impressive answer when people asked me, “What are you going to do with your life?” I came up with some ready-made answers (becoming a foreign correspondent or going to law school) that I could offer in such a circumstance, but I had no idea if I even liked those plans or how to go about realizing them. I just felt an immense pressure to have it figured out, but the truth was, I was a mess. So maybe it’s not surprising that the night before commencement, I partied a little too hard, then slept through my alarm in the morning and arrived late to the festivities with a terrible hangover and parents who seemed equal parts disappointed and concerned.

What a joy to get a do-over! To be well rested. To say good morning and meet the gaze of my mom and dad without a twinge of shame, to see them seated in the front row when I walked onto the stage, both filming on their phones, just glowing with pride. To feel fully present and grateful. To share that day and that honor with Jon. As I scanned all those faces, I thought about those young people’s lives, all the heartbreaks and adventures and failures and joys that awaited them, and I was moved and filled with hope. It really got me!

Because of my current health circumstances, things are more uncertain than ever, and yet, I was struck that I don’t feel lost the way I did at twenty-two. I feel as steady, as rooted—in who I am and how I want to fill my days—as I ever have. I’ve learned that commencing doesn’t always look like commencing. Commencing can look like waiting. It can look like fear, like confusion, like heartbreak, or some other ending that is really a beginning. And the only way I know how to navigate the uncertainty of being human is to pay attention. To take note of what’s working and what’s not. To be brave enough to change course, to inch closer to whatever it is that makes you feel alive—that fills you with a sense of possibility.

And this brings me to the very special guest essay and prompt I’m sharing with you today. It’s called “The Opposite of Loneliness” by the late Marina Keegan, composed for her fellow Yale graduates and published in May of 2012, mere days before Marina died in a car accident. When I first read it, I was twenty-three years old and living in the Hope Lodge while recovering from my first marrow transplant, and I felt humbled. It was a reminder that I wasn’t special in my proximity to death—it could happen to any of us at any point, at any age. But I was also inspired by Marina’s defiance, by how forward-looking she was, by her belief that it’s never too late, and by how she insisted on dwelling in possibility.

So here in this season of commencement, I’m honored to share “The Opposite of Loneliness,” which was recently re-published in her posthumous collection of short stories and essays. May it inspire you to dwell in possibility. To change your mind. To start over. To commence.

Yours newly,

Dr. Jaouad

Some Items of Note—

• If you missed our last gathering of the Hatch, our monthly creative hour for paid subscribers, we’ve posted a video replay! During the hour, Carmen Radley shared a passage from Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital and had participants meditate on a home away from home. Don’t miss the recap here!

• There’s a very limited stock of Alchemy Tour merch left—the silk scarf and baseball cap sold out, but the Wonder sweatshirt and the Book of Alchemy tote are still available. Get yours here!

Henri Matisse, The Dance (1909)

Prompt 340. The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow after Commencement and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four A.M. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers—partnerless, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse, I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m thirty. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should have ...,” “If I’d,” “wish I’d...”

Of course, there are things we wish we’d done: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my high school self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes...). We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out—that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy—and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it: already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology... if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman... if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that...

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating from college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at Est Est Est. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS,* probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

*Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall is a Yale building that houses deans’ offices and a large lecture hall.

Your prompt for the week:

We can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.

What would you do, or make, or become if you believed this? If you told yourself, “It’s not too late”? Write into that sense of possibility. In the end, it’s all we have.

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Today’s Contributor—

Marina Keegan (1989-2012) was a writer of short stories, personal essays, social commentary, poems, and plays: a literary pentathlete. ​“The Opposite of Loneliness” was published in a special edition of the Yale Daily News at the 2012 Commencement exercises; after her death in a car accident five days after graduation, her words of inspiration resounded around the globe, receiving 1.4 million hits in 98 countries. It’s also the title essay of a collection of Marina’s essays and fiction, The Opposite of Loneliness, first published in 2014. An anniversary edition with more of Marina’s writing and a new foreward by R.F. Kuang is available now.

How are you approaching The Book of Alchemy?

Reading the comments section last week and hearing about all the ways this community is approaching The Book of Alchemy made me so happy! I’m sharing a handful below with the hope that it inspires your own approach to creative alchemy and connection:

• “I read the whole book, savoring each essay. I am now reading it again and attempting some of the prompts. I am not a writer, but I am at a stage of my life where I want to get out of my comfort zone. I want to let go of my fear of trying things I find totally intimidating.” —Janice

• “My dearest friend and I live on opposite ends of California. We don’t get to see each other nearly enough. We committed to writing to a prompt a day and then meeting on Zoom once a week. She was concerned she wouldn’t be able to sustain the practice consistently. I was concerned I wouldn’t write well. Both of our worries are being alchemized. Dross into Gold. Dross into Gold.” —Kate

• “The Book of Alchemy is utterly delightful. It is very hard for me not to ingest it all at once, hungry as I am for the wisdom and truth and love I know is contained in its pages. I have gifted it to eight different people... so far. I never want to keep beautiful magic to myself, and it’s been so much fun to read what my friends are doing with the majestic work you curated.” —Dominique

• “My husband and I are reading The Book of Alchemy together. We both have our own copies, but it is rewarding to do the prompts and then talk to my husband about them—what we thought of them, sometimes we even share what we wrote with each other. It’s a great mixture of different prompts and your introductions to the chapters are always amazing!” —Melissa