|
|
||||
|
Drew Fletcher A nebbishy but precocious 9 years old, his face made to look small by the trademark horn-rimmed glasses, kid Woody is an entrancing avatar of his mental, anhedonic adult persona. The universe is everything, he asserts by way of excuse. The exchange is a comically morose take on the concept genius is childhood recaptured at will ; for Woody Allen, grown-up gloom is just the grown up form of an inborn affectation : existential thinking. Nourished from an early age on the diet of my folks systematic humanism, I remember fibbing up at night in apprehension of death : my and the universes. Like sex, this state of fear and quivering had its latency period ( there were about 8 years there where I just thought about baseball ). At first , my narcissism led me to believe that I was the sole one who had such misgivings. But when adolesence hit, I discovered the fascinated sector of existentialist literature and alternative music. All of a sudden , I was no longer a freak ; I belonged to an aristocracy of misunderstood brooders and first-rate melancholics. I read Camus, rocked out to the Smashing Pumpkins, wearing black"the common clichs. Like all thirteen-year-olds, I used to be a loser. But in my mind, I was deep and bohemian, a genuine suburban bermensch. Over time, perpetual existential crisis has noiselessly faded into the background. Certainly , some of that includes maturity ; we always outgrow our posturing teen angst. But part of me has started to think about this a major loss. In a way, Im now having an existential crisis over the absence of existential crisis in my life. As a British concentrator, Ive written 4 papers on Hamlet, and read the play numerous times. Yet not once whilst I was preening my way to an A-minus did I pause with mortal stress over the harrowing picture of Hamlet addressing Yoricks skull. I blame Harvard for some of this"partly because its fun to blame Harvard, but also as we truly are dunked in a careerist, company, and insipidly practical dystopia. We hear tons about stress, even clinical depression and psychological illness in the Harvard student body"no wonder, given the big pressure on each of us to make a touch around the planet. The incest part could have been a little bizarre. A touch more morbidity might make us all a bit happier here. Next time you are fretting about your GPA or your impending consulting interview, just remember : You are in Cambridge, but you are also in the universe. |
|||
|
Cannon Lynch said: |
||||
 |
|
|
Copyright cambridgediet.supadiet.com, All Rights Reserved |
|
