I wasn’t able to figure out why I was feeling so somber this weekend. It was not the fact that I was single on Valentine’s Day—this fact hasn’t changed since I was born—nor that Duke necessarily had me down.
As has become my custom, I am writing this Sunday on a tight self-imposed deadline that keeps me from over-thinking what I write. For some reason, writing this weekend was excruciatingly difficult. Well, this week has been excruciatingly difficult.
On Tuesday, we learned of the shooting in Chapel Hill where Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha where killed. On Wednesday, our community gathered to remember and celebrate their lives when thousands gathered in Chapel Hill for a vigil in their honor. All week, my newsfeed had been flooded with images from this year’s What I Be Project at Duke, a project that empowers through honestly and vulnerability. I participated in the project last year during creator Steve Rosenfield’s first visit to campus.
With so much going on, I could barely organize my thoughts. I had to stop, pause, and reflect for a moment. Pray for our community and for our nation. Take a minute to honor the lives we have lost and the ones that still continue around us every single day.
I had to because my heart is heavy not just because of these events, but what has happened in my life over the past few months. Every day we keep going and going through papers and midterms and problem sets and meetings and the list goes on and I find myself weary by the end of it. Compound that with the realities we each face, our own insecurities and grief, and I am certain it all is just cause to pause.
Processing emotions and insecurities is vital to our mental health, and when we choose to ignore them they often don’t just go away, they sometimes get worse or simply persist.
But I have begun to wonder whether all that is lost on us amidst the drive to succeed. As if one Facebook post with a multitude of likes and comments of affirmation and support can compare to being present in the life of a friend. As if a declaration of condemnation on social media compares to supporting Muslim peers struggling through the past month of scandals. As if internalizing grief or burdens can replace sharing it with others around us.
I honestly do not believe that we lack something other generations of students possessed or that we do not have the capacity to grieve and support. What I do know is that we can choose and often do choose to avoid the messiness of emotions in order to fit into a culture that posits that such vulnerabilities are weaknesses and sharing should be avoided at all costs. The crazy thing is, though, that by internalizing rather than expressing such insecurities, we limit our ability to grow and our resiliency when times get tough in our lives.
This reality is not for a lack of effort by administrators and student leaders who have hosted authenticity programs and campus initiatives to bring awareness to mental health or personal identity. What it comes down to is whether or not as a community we value each other enough to look past the veil and recognize that each of us shares one common attribute regardless of affiliation, income, race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. We each have our own vulnerabilities. Some are perhaps much greater, but valuation is not my core point today.
When we begin to recognize that behind each face we see every day there is a person who shares in the struggle of self-identification on a campus, which places such high demands on its students, we start to live with empathy.
Empathy requires courage to ask how someone is doing and truly mean it. It means learning that loving someone else doesn’t require a romantic relationship or a special friendship, but simply that each person I see possesses an intrinsic value and worth regardless of where they are from, what they believe, or which social group they claim membership.
I wonder today what this campus would look like if we, if I, could take these maxims to heart. I wonder whether we could really love each other, whether justice for all in our institutions is possible because we learned to empathize, whether we could allow ourselves the grace to grieve or voice our insecurities while supporting each other in safe spaces every single day. We have the capability to do so yet will always struggle in making such a dream into a reality for every member of our community.
I hope that we can begin to learn that grief or sharing in the insecurities of others is not a form of personal weakness but a signpost of strength and resilience. Not a commoditized strength supported by Facebook comments and trending hash tags, but one that makes it through the tough times, through the messiness of life.
Take a moment to pause today. Reach out to a friend you know is struggling. Voice that vulnerability to a peer. Life can wear you down and we can only grow when we take the time to.
Jay Sullivan is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday.
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