A funny thing happened on the way to the service project yesterday. It occurred to me that my life has been worth living.
What an idea. My life is worth living: The phrase evokes standing wild-eyed on top of a tall building with intent to jump, a sweating cop talking me down: "Don't do it, man. Life is worth it!" (Has Baker Tower ever launched a suicide?)
But that's not what I had in mind.
I am saving the story of the arrest that led to my suspension for another day, but I will share this. It was the first time I ever really got in trouble (ding!), and it was not a little trouble. At the time, the impending punishment was troubling enough, but things only began to suck in earnest when I next saw my parents face to face.
After the (surprisingly calm) conversation, I went to my room and considered killing myself.
It was my first time, and blissfully brief: something terrible had happened, and it simply occurred to me that -- as Hamlet knew -- life is optional. It took me thirty seconds to decide enthusiastically and irreversibly in life's favor. (Take a deep breath, Mom.)
My decision was personal: I wanted to continue pursuing happiness. Fifteen months later, I am volunteering here in Mississippi, and I am a different person. Yesterday's realization that my life was worthwhile was not personal, but utilitarian. After five weeks of service, the world is , perhaps for the first time , better off for my being in it.
It's not as gloomy an observation as it sounds. I am twenty. Prior to becoming a volunteer, I had been a student all my life. Society-wise, I was taking much more than I was giving. Essentially, I offered the world no more than personal relationships within the tiny circle of my friends and family -- and such benefits are nebulous at best. (A sentiment which shortchanges emotion, I realize, but we are in infancy of the long-awaited Democratic Congress. The red states are wary; this is no time to get wishy-washy.)
After five weeks of service in Biloxi, though, my net planetary impact is finally positive. John Stuart Mill would greenlight my birth. What's more, my impact is satisfyingly quantitative in a manner alien to the scholarly halls of Baker-Berry: pounds of debris removed, number of homes made livable, calories of food served to the homeless.
Beardsley recently returned from a Kentucky vacation visiting (Facebook-sanctioned!) girlfriend Nichola Tucker '08. His homecoming brought the number of Dartmouth undergraduates in the Hands On Gulf Coast camp to four: Beardsley and I have been joined by Eli Mitchell '10 and Josh Ring '08.
Volunteering is changing our lives, but we are still from Dartmouth. When we aren't working, the four of us are usually found in a circle of couches, side by side on our separate computers, not talking -- a Novack colony in the Deep South.
We've also introduced the spirit of DOC Trips. Every Thursday night, the volunteers hold an open mic called the No-Talent Talent Show: Adorably enough, the four of us performed the Salty Dog Rag.
Inevitably, my partner was Beardsley. Still, our relationship is only becoming more complicated. He recently called me out in public for various flaws in my personality, as is his habit (full disclosure: I am annoying). But then he appeared to have a change of heart.
"You know that, under all that, I still love you, right?
"95 percent of the time," I said."Good. Let's make it 80."
Color me bewildered. Any pointers, Nichola?
Bereft of Blitz and Collis, I was heartened by the arrival of Dartmouth reinforcements in the form of Eli and Josh. Josh has infused needed color into our slang. Born and bred in Indianapolis, his celebratory exclamation is "Hot town!" and any misfortune is a "hot mess." Also, he's made more friends here in two weeks than John and I have made in five -- attributable, in my opinion, to his flawless mirrored aviators.
Eli is from Hanover, our townie treasure. She is also overrun by frustration, the intimate details of which are well-known to everyone in earshot. Eli is frustrated by not being twenty-one, sexually frustrated and frustrated that she has never before appeared in this column (which is stunningly famous on opposite day).
Having told you, the reader, about my contemplation of suicide, I feel that we've grown closer. I'm comfortable, then, ending with this Beardsley anecdote.
Here in the Hands On camp, showering is less than habitual. I felt it special, then, when Beardsley and I happened to simultaneously muster enough self-respect to bathe. Towels over our shoulders, we pried ourselves from our laptops. Loud enough for the crowded room to hear, I announced that it was "nakey time with me and John."
Beardsley's head drooped. He murmured, "I'm so sad all the time."
I'm 95 percent sure that he was exaggerating.
