“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.”
If you were to ask me what my favorite book was, I honestly couldn’t tell you. There are so many to choose from, so many that had different meanings to me at various points in my life. But if you were to ask: what book really encompassed my time as a college student? What book inspired me the most? Only one would come to mind: "The Opposite of Loneliness" by Marina Keegan. A collection of essays and short stories, both fiction and non, "The Opposite of Loneliness" gives a glance inside the thoughts of an optimistic college student.
Written during her time at Yale, Keegan successfully captures the hopeful uncertainty felt amongst college students. Wanting to make an impact on the world while simultaneously not knowing what exactly she wants to do with her life, Keegan’s writing is extremely relatable. Approaching graduation, we begin to think that “it's too late to be a doctor, to star in a movie, to run for president. There’s a really good chance I’ll never do anything. It’s selfish and self-centered to consider, but it scares me.” But as she goes on to say, these thoughts are completely ridiculous. “We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time.” She explains in multiple prose that we need to quit stressing about the future and live for now, because that is all we have.
She describes in her graduation essay, the opening composition, what we as college students fear the most: the future. The period after college when the world is at our feet and we have no idea what to do with it. The period where we are truly on our own and the most vulnerable. We know we must move on and we want to, but part of us is still clinging to the familiarity of our peers. She says, “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.”
“I will live for love and the rest will take care of itself,” were words that rang through the auditorium when she gave her graduation commencement for Yale’s class of 2012. Some of the words spoken on the last day they saw their daughter, Marina’s parents choose to remember her uplifting works instead of her tragic end. Five days after graduation, she was involved in a fatal car accident, leaving behind amazing stories and a bright future. But, her parents are hopeful that her work will inspire its readers to follow their dreams and make a difference, because it’s possible.
“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We’re so young. We can’t, we must not lose sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have.”
