While reading on my flight from Rome to Beirut this past summer, I stumbled across an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote that I took out of context and have since held dear:
Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening—
I’ve been restless. It’s the beginning of my last year at Duke. I don’t have any concrete plans and haven’t been inspired enough to make any. Instead, I’ve deflected questions of the future by sardonically mumbling about post-graduation plans to move to Paris or Berlin. I’m surprised—and admittedly, a little flattered—that no one has yet to question me further.
After discovery of the Fitzgerald quote, I scrawled it into my notebook, circled it five times and stepped off the plane at 3 a.m. in Lebanon, feeling enlightened for my next adventure. Then I spent the rest of my summer affirmed that whatever I did at a given time, from attending music festivals to living abroad to graduating early, was “the ultimately important.” I decided to embody the quote as a new lifestyle. I would create, craft and engineer until every detail in my life felt relevant to the future ahead. Without realizing, I was making mental notes to myself: what does this reflect toward my long-term goals; what have I learned; what did I like, or not like. It was uncharacteristically methodical and calculating, and it was silly.
So now, a month into this school year, I’m sitting in my Central Campus apartment completely stumped over how I’m supposed to turn the things that I enjoy most (pen sketches, walks to Durham art spaces, flowers in mason jars, casual but meaningful conversation) into something relevant (like a job, or my first editor’s note). I wondered when my definition of “important” evolved from becoming a painter to going to college to changing my major to advocating for the arts. None of these translate easily, and that’s why I just tell everyone that I’m moving to Europe.
See, things are transient right now, and that’s unsettling. The spaces we inhabit are impermanent. We move our possessions into storage every year, and most of us don’t actually own the furniture we use. We learn something for a semester and then sell back our textbooks. We, along with our relationships, belongings and values, are constantly changing. Because things are so impermanent, we’ve adopted the habit of perceiving everything in terms of how and to what extent they’ll benefit us. Currently, I think I’m supposed to focus on becoming a real person who does important things. Yet here I am, still uncovering old sketchbooks, music albums and pairs of shoes. I end up throwing them out and grimacing or poking fun at what feels like a past self.
This brings me to my next point. To quote Jim Jarmusch quoting Jean-Luc Godard:
It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.
Despite how ridiculous I looked in my favorite outfit in ninth grade—oversized flannel, blue jeans and a beanie—I still felt like I had confidence and ownership over my appearance. Even though I was too shy as a kid to fully communicate my love for music through my piano or violin performances, I still wrote my college application essay on Beethoven’s fifth symphony. And even though I resigned my dream of becoming a writer sometime in middle school, that dream has never felt more tangible than it does now. The person you meet today is embedded with two decades' worth of sincerities and uncertainties. And no matter how embarrassing, how unforgiving or even how inauthentic, these tidbits—these multitudes—were once important, so in a way, they still are.
Everything matters! Right now for me, that involves a one-punch refrigerator poem by my apartment-mate (“why are we performing like / imagined silhouettes / that have no passion”). It involves the resolution to make decisions based on where I want to live over following a particular career path. It involves lavender flowers, strings of lights, women artists and struggling to make a point in French class. It involves the process of rediscovering old writings and drawings and feeling just as proud of them as I did way back when. It involves radicalness, the readiness to embrace change and the willingness to view everything as the ultimately important.
Whatever makes you think twice, whatever moves you, whatever comes up as an afterthought, is relevant. I’m not saying you need to be constantly self-aware. I don’t need you to explain why. I’m asking you to allow yourself to cherish the tiny details and mishaps; to own up to the decisions you have made and will make; and to remain unapologetic for what you were, are and will be. The ultimately important becomes you, and I hope it excites you. We choose what to make of it and where to take it. It’s how a place becomes both wonderful and trying, all at once.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.