Crossing the Rubicon

Note: If you know for a fact what you'll be doing 12 months from now, don't bother reading this. Parties are raging and goodbyes (to say nothing of bodily fluids) are being exchanged like lira for euros. We approve whole-heartedly of this Bacchanalian excess and hope that each of the next four days and nights prove wilder than the one before. Nonetheless, it's impossible to wade through all this raucous merriment without sensing tension when well-wishers turn sullen and mutter under their breath as arch-enemies pass by, or when two friends stand aloof because one is moving to New York and the other to Sydney.

It feels like the ties binding the Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1999 together are about to be decimated by an uncaring fate. While life in school-and life at Harvard, in particular-has been a defining period for all of us, life after school seems to be a giant leap off into a great abyss. So it's not surprising that so many of us are asking, "School will be done with-why not simply burn our bridges behind us?"

Because, from a purely utilitarian perspective, that jackass whom you so thoroughly enjoyed mocking over lunch, coffee and cigarettes could easily end up being the guy with the sweet hook-up for you at The New Yorker or Warner Brothers. But even such pragmatism holds deeper meaning: Once the smoke clears from Tercentenary Theater and those of us with no outstanding library fines have gotten our sheepskins, there will still be 1,600 singing men and women of Harvard. Like it or not, once an alum, always an alum-Harvard will never let you go. (When it comes to tracking people down, the senior class marshals make the U.S. Marshals look like Keystone Kops.)

Graduating from Harvard will leave its mark on even the most callous among us. We've been convinced that only the promise of success will buoy us up from the murky depths of the real world. Achievement got us here, achievement sustained our identities here, so why shouldn't achievement remain the hallmark of our post-Harvard lives? As long as people feel they ought to become a doctor, district attorney or corporate raider (i.e., "viable future donor") when they leave this ivory tower, you can be sure the development office will be smiling all the way to the bank.

But even for those of us commencing the rest of our lives with barely a plan, let alone a career or "consulting job that I'm holding for two years until B-school," the abyss needn't be so deep. Hell, you could always move to San Francisco, ever a haven for the aimless-and maybe that's not a bad idea to begin with. Despite Harvard's emphasis to the contrary, uncertainty is no vice. You'll be surprised just how many seniors have no clue what they'll be doing next year. One of us hopes he won't be selling his soul too cheaply in order to become a Hollywood studio suit; the other hopes to find himself drunk at a tavern in a Spanish villa. But neither of us doubts that we'll be all right, and maybe that's the real moral of the story.

The end of days is not at hand. Graduation isn't the Rapture, and although they might see themselves as the elect, the senior gift committee isn't destined for any better of a life than the rest of us. Our lives until now have been spent in school, but the end of our lives as we have known them doesn't mean that our lives are ending. It doesn't matter that you won't make the "Alumni Notes" section of next spring's Harvard Magazine because, whether you just spent the last two hours vomiting sangria in a Barcelona gutter or making $6,000 on savvy on-line trades, what will matter-the things that will let you wade across the abyss instead of sinking 20,000 leagues under-are your relationships.

We are part of a community that will continue to exist even when it no longer resides on the campus that brought it together. Our common experiences are the substance of what we take away from Harvard, stripped of its institutional trappings. Graduating only means we'll no longer trek to Store 24 for a late night Slim Jim, lament Harvard Dining Services' endless variations on unflavored chicken entrees or attend 500-student lectures (something many of us stopped doing years ago anyway). But it shouldn't mean that the people who have been part of our lives won't stay that way. Our fellow seniors are our friends and lovers, our extracurricular colleagues and our fiercest rivals. By maintaining ties to those who have given our lives meaning, we can keep ourselves afloat amidst all the uprooting and reshuffling of our priorities and ideals. No matter how turbulent life becomes, it's always easier to orient yourself when you have other people as your compass.

During these past two manic-depressing weeks, many have succumbed to the temptation of short fuses, of freely speaking their minds once too often, over-indulging in the shoulder-shrugging "screw it all" motivation to do something they might never have done otherwise. And that's fine. Nihilism and the Last Chance Dance are good up to a point-the occasional bridge needs to go up in flames, if only for form's sake. But we seem to be embracing the opportunities for closure a little too heartily these days. The past is and always will be with you-didn't anyone else see "The Last Days of Disco?" Don't cut so many social threads this Thursday, and instead let them run through your personal tapestry even after you've moved out. The less final you leave your past, the fuller you can make your present.

So Wednesday night, when you and your friends are trying to hide the glistening in your eyes as you celebrate the approaching morning, say a toast to all the roads yet traveled, to how you'll never lose touch with even your worst enemy thanks to the ubiquity of e-mail and to 1,600 closed chapters, open books and happily ever-afters. Murad S. Hussain '99, a psychology concentrator in Eliot House, was associate editor of Fifteen Minutes in 1998. T.J. Kelleher '99, an anthropology concentrator in Leverett House, was editor of Fifteen Minutes in 1998.