Soyez Monstreux

On December 11, 2009 my way of life was changed. Well, maybe not changed per se, but validated for sure. I was reminded of important information that I had stupidly forgotten about amidst assignments and plans for the future. I’m not sure that I’ll even be able to convey what happened in a manner that will do it justice, but I’ll do my best.

It was the last day of classes of the fall semester of my senior year. A clear, crisp day in Boston with a high of 15 degrees; if you were unfortunate enough to be walking against the wind (which invariably, you were) it felt like -20. I woke up for the last session of my senior seminar in French literature lead by my academic advisor who also happens to be the best professor I have ever had and, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant, most amazing people to ever walk our planet. Seriously. The topic for the semester was monsters – beings that stopped at nothing to obtain their desired end. We examined monsters in several of their forms: Greek queens who were rotten to the core; evil archdeacons, bell ringers whose monstrosity ended up being only skin-deep; men who killed for no reason and didn’t cry at their mother’s funeral. The last monster of this list is the main character of Albert Camus’ The Stranger; he was on our academic menu for the day, accompanied by the deeper philosophy that the author wanted to convey.

Class started off that day as it usually did – we were invited to ask questions that lingered from our last reading and define words that l’Academie Française decided were not worthy enough to be in the pages of the latest edition of Le Petit Robert dictionary. Our professor excused himself for preparing a lecture – he normally wanted our class to consist of discussion and debate as seminars usually do. That day, he wanted to make sure that the concept around which the semester was planned had been understood by all. In a matter of minutes the lecture went from a review of Camus’ philosophy of the absurd that linked together the themes of the other texts we read and then straight to us, his students. “If Camus were here today,” he started (en français), “he would never tell you to study life, nor it’s meaning. He would just tell you to live it. That’s it. No “what ifs” or “how comes”. There’s no utility in trying to figure out why you’re here – by the time you do, you’ll be old and broken, your kids will hate you, you’ll be out of touch with everything, and you’ll spend your last days trying to figure out how you could have possibly missed what was going on around you for the last 80 years.” He went on for the next 40 minutes with anecdotes from his own life and the philosophies of thinkers who had really been onto something. People, like my professor, who realized that this world and this life are so much bigger than anything we could even fathom. Beings who drank down life and then ran back to the faucet for more. I furiously tried to scribble down everything that came out of his mouth, not wanting to miss a thing.

He ended lecture by asking “Did anyone see the sun rise this morning?” We looked back at him in silence, our bodies motionless but our souls stirred. “It was gorgeous,” he replied. “Please just promise me that you’ll take time every once in a while to just look and appreciate. Don’t stress about what you have to accomplish; each of you is exceptional and will have no problem building your future. Go out have great winter breaks, but more importantly, have great lives. Enter the world and be monsters.”

I wanted to cry, and rejoice, and give hugs. I wanted to live.

We all stood and applauded, our minds blown by what had just happened and ready to take on finals, papers and anything else that was thrown our way. The key was to just maintain perspective – we confuse things that are not serious like school and work and the future with things that actually are serious like love and family and simply being.

This brings me to the point of my blog. My take on life: informal and unconventional. La vie bohème. This is me, living and being, maneuvering through life one day at a time, searching for the good in everything. It’s a tough mission, but it’s, more or less, what I’ve always done. And so far, it’s been pretty fruitful.