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They told me I would have 700 words to say whatever I want. So, I wanted to tell you the two most important things I have learned while spending four years here, at least, the things that are on my mind now.
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First: There is very little in life that is not about being in the right place at the right time. Getting a job, getting promoted, finding someone you love, discovering what to do with your life, all these things have less to do with what you know or what you do than is comforting to think about.
So my advice is that of a wise man named Daniel Pinkwater who said that it is impossible to know when the right time will be, so the important thing is to find the right place and just hang around for a while. This is true. There is not a whole lot you can do. But, you can do your best to put yourself where you want to be, and seize whatever opportunities come along.
The other thing I have learned takes some explaining, so bear with me for a moment and just imagine:
There are more than 6 billion people in this world, a number so large it is practically infinite. Imagine all the people who you know, even vaguely, by face alone. If you went to a big school or worked somewhere with a lot of people or came into contact with a lot of people in a day, you might imagine you would know 10,000 people by face at the end of your life. Now imagine how many people you know by name, just first name ‘- maybe in the thousands at most. Now imagine all the people who are loosely considered your friends ‘- maybe in the hundreds.
Now in that small subsection of the total number of people in the world, in that one 600,000th of the number of people in the world realize you have found every kind of person and every relationship you can imagine. There are people you like, dislike, are creeped out by, people who love you, admire you, despise you, people you lust after, you loath, you love deeply. And you can imagine that, if you took another 10,000 people you would find the same. Why wouldn’t you?
The thing is that it is simply impossible for all of these people who might be your friends or your lovers or anything else, to be a part of your world. They are a part of their own world, and part of other people’s worlds, and you may only intersect with theirs briefly, but probably not at all. The vast, vast majority of the world you will probably never even see.
I mention this because we rarely consider the vastness of the world, or even other people for that matter. We are often concerned with the very small amount of what is tangible to us, and forget that there is an inconceivable number of other people who are going through exactly what we are.
So I urge that there is really only one thing to do.
It is to keep your heart open. To deeply touch the lives of everyone you meet. To fall in love a hundred times a day or more and let it go; that’s all you can do. The world is too big to have it all, but too full to be disconnected from; you will always be lonely and never be alone. Smile often and never doubt that, by being compassionate, you have the power to make the world a better place. If you do anything, do this.
I wanted to thank The Massachusetts Daily Collegian from the bottom of my heart for giving me this, and countless other opportunities. And also for proving (daily) that a group of people dedicated to a common goal have only their imaginations as a limit to what they can accomplish, truly.
Thank you to my friends, who continually remind me of the basic goodness in people when I forget.
Thanks to everyone I’ve met, who made this what it was. It has been wonderful.
To those of you I haven’t met yet, bon voyage, and I hope our paths cross sometime in the future.
Ben Williams was an assistant news editor. He can be reached off the coast of
