The Feeling of Now
Callie Shaw
October 12th, 2023
There is a child-like magic that comes with the excitement I feel before I get to see people I love. I remember being a little girl, squeezing my eyes as tight as could be, hoping that when I opened them, it would be time to open presents on Christmas morning - the way my stomach fluttered with impatience and anticipation. It’s funny how as we grow up, that familiar feeling comes back, sending a message to my brain that something big is coming - but it's no longer about presents or stockings or carrots eaten by reindeers. It's about friends, about family - two words that have become perfectly synonymous at this point. My friends who have become my family, my family who have become my friends - the overwhelming feeling of love that sits in my stomach, waiting patiently for the tight hugs and laughs to be had.
This past summer, I was given a book called “The Opposite of Loneliness” by a wonderful friend. The book is a collection of essays and stories written by Marina Keegan during her time studying at Yale. A few days before she graduated, she wrote a piece titled “The Opposite of Loneliness.” Her words seem to perfectly illustrate how it feels to be this age - to be surrounded by so many people who are on your team, rooting for you, supporting you, laughing with you, dancing with you, growing up with you. Keegan explains how in the English language, we don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness. We have no formal label for this feeling that isn’t quite companionship and isn’t quite community - it's just a feeling of being one in a sea of many who are going through real-life things together. She explains how even though there is no word for it, she knows it's how she felt right then in that moment, anxiously awaiting her graduation from Yale, the closing of her college years - her years of learning and growing alongside so many others.
This piece has stuck with me, pretty much making itself known somehow every day since reading it. How do you even attempt to describe the magic of being young and naive, of being stressed, tired, imperfect, and yet so inexplicably happy, of being anxious of the endings - anxious that I have something so good, so unbelievably special, that it will rip my heart out to say goodbye when May comes.
Marina Keegan passed away in a tragic car accident five days after she graduated from Yale. This piece was her final message to the world - her reminder to us to bask in the gift of time, of space, of mistakes and love and creativity and kindness. To nurture that feeling of togetherness - to bring its spirit with us wherever we go, imperfectly knitting a web around us, where unbounded love and laughter hold us tight in their arms. I haven’t yet figured out how to not preemptively mourn the goodbye to my college years - in my happiest moments, it seems to knock in the quiet parts of my brain, reminding me that life is fleeting and these moments aren’t forever. I think what I am realizing, though, is that it doesn’t have to be a bad thing to feel anxious about leaving this place, these people. What a gift it is to have created a home so full of joy, silliness, sleepless nights and hungover mornings - a house so perfectly imperfectly filled with the faces of people who I somehow went 18 years without knowing and now can’t imagine living without now.
When family and friends (maybe the overlap of these two is another word we need in our English language) come to visit me here, in this place, it is the most magical thing in the entire world. To welcome them into the space we have made, where we play while we are young and love as we could never be hurt, continues to make up some of my most prized memories. They have watched me create myself, learn to embrace my quirks, my humor, my sensitivity, and my empathy. They have supported me, cheering me on without hesitation, so that I could arrive at this life. When they are here, I feel thankful - to have made homes out of people. To have this abundance of people who love each other because they love me, to have people who you can’t wait to hug, to hold tight, to laugh with, to cry with.
These days are fleeting. This feeling of solidarity will dissipate, we will walk into the next phases of our lives with anxieties and unknowns and tearful goodbyes. But we will also walk into this next phase of life having the privilege of knowing what it feels like to live in the opposite of loneliness - to be so unconditionally on each other’s teams, to lean on and be leaned on, to love and be loved by. I hope that it is this we take with us, reminding us to plant that feeling wherever we end up - to step back and wait patiently for it to grow - so that more people in this world can feel this spectacular, all-encompassing, inexplicable feeling of now.
