The Opposite of Loneliness
This article by Marina Keegan has been making the rounds in social media and the news over the past few weeks.
I’ve read it multiple times, and each time, I can’t get past the fact that what she eludes to is how I felt after college and for the most part, still feel. It’s a poignant piece and puts into words what many college graduates experience I’m sure. The back story makes it even more powerful.
An excerpt:
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. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.
It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.
…
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.
Even over a year after one of the most important days of my life, graduation day, I’m still scared. Scared that I’ll lose the web. Family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, people. That’s what I live for. Losing that would crush me.
But things have a way of working themselves out.
“We’re in this together. Let’s make something happen to this world.”
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You won’t lose your web, your friends and your Family. As you expend your wing to the world, there will be a lot of excitements, challenges and opposite of loneliness await for you!