One Many

Nota: We are one--there are many things to be done. We are all emerging from Harvard College on the doorstep of the new millennium. We are very tired but also very educated. Life is long. We are armed with expository writing skills, foreign language skills, quantitative reasoning skills and an unassailable body of core knowledge. We have mostly shared a common diet, common living quarters and a common peer group. This makes Harvard neither fascist nor cooperative--it is as little one as the other.

From the safe haven of the ivy tower we will scatter widely, both geographically and professionally. Some of us may not last through the end of the 20th century. Others may make it through the 21st century and into the 22nd century. If this happens, and life becomes even longer, it may be due to one of our own's findings. That would leave the rest of us to report on the finding, critique it, buy stock in it and design policy around it. A few of us would ignore it completely. All of this would happen in Bilbao, Chicago, Pocatello and Rio De Janeiro, and in other places too. We will be right in the mix of the world, and we will be way out of it as well. On Thursday we will stand as one, but as many ones. Out of our many ones will come manifold destinies. Choose them wisely and with good care.

Amendment: We are many--there are many things to be done.

We have come from Atlanta, Geneva, Jakarta and Vienna. Our backgrounds are as diverse as our interests. We have taken classes in Acadian, Afro-American art history, archaeology and astrophysics. Some of us are on the fast track to success, others on the low road to glory. A few of us aren't in the driver's seat at all, but even we will get there somehow.

Where? To no specific place, really. As we learned from the great moral relativists who have formed the bedrock of our education: There are no right answers; there is no center; everything is relative. The many roads we took to get here will continue on in separate lanes beyond this graduation exit. For in the end, there is no exit. Life is a journey, not a destination, and the journey is the reward. There is no happiness around the corner: Happiness is the corner. Whether you become a philosopher, a race car driver or an executive at an advertising agency, enjoy every step of the way on your way to where, because way is where.

Revision: We are many--there is one thing to do.

In Bikini, Biloxi, Bimini and Miami, they are waiting for us to descend. Yes, we came from every place, all of these places. That is where we will go back to, only with a difference. Our differences will become their similarities, and vice versa. Did the place change or did we? Both of them changed and did not change. Nothing changed, and that changes everything. How soon some of us will assimilate, standing out from the crowd, in perfect conformity with the rest of us. We can take or leave us, but they will welcome us.

Who are we? We are many. Who are they? They are many and then some. Put us and them together and come up with one. It takes a village to raise a child. Unity out of diversity. In the country and in the city. Here and there, we can say yes, we are many, but we are one many. When we get out there we will be one among many, moving from one one many to another one many. The sum of our manys is what makes each of us our own one.

Therefore, to conclude: We are one--there is one thing to do.

Celebrate. Continue having fun. Look back. Move on. When we stand in the Yard on Thursday, that will be one thing. And that will be followed by another thing, and that by another. The things that follow this commencement thing may vary from person to person. They will be many in kind but one in degree. They are coming whether we want them or no. There is nothing we can do about this. And thus, we can do anything. There is nothing we can't do.

We will have to do what we have to do, whether we will or no, because we have been doing it already. What is the one thing that we have to do as one? There is nothing in a book to describe what it is. Nor is there a formula. But it exists. And we will find it, even if we do so by induction. It might be a many and not a one. But we are as many as we are one. One thing is for certain: it rests at a place where many different descriptions of it simply won't do. But it's there. In Honolulu and in Juneau. It's not so much the name of it or its particulars: it is what we make it, and we make it the same, with a difference. We make it differently, and it turns out the same. Whatever it is, it is what we will do. And it will do. Wherever, whenever, whatever. Remember: As one many there is nothing we can't do.

Jim Cocola '98, a Crimson editor, is a history and literature concentrator in Winthrop House.