The end of things

Many friends are coming to the end of their time at University. Three years ago I wrote an opinion piece for Varsity on the subject of leaving, which I read again recently. It's still accurate, but it was orignally and rather awfully titled 'Love in a time of Pseudo-Intellectualism':

Life is about gleaning satisfaction from our inevitable failures, not about finding failure in our satisfaction. As another ‘year’ ends, we stagger off into the blissful obscurity of the real world and for many a little part of us dies, because University is about love; love of ideas, of situations, of buildings, of drinks, of friends, and that special sort of love we will look back upon and call the charming madness of youth. My grandmother once told me that we were all most open about ourselves at university –perhaps the big wide world instills in us all defences and barriers to honesty which prevent the magnanimous approach we have to strangers we meet at May Balls, parties, even in the street. Perhaps as we become more serious we hide away our private lives, and create a duality of existence which is difficult to overcome. We ought to remain as heady, as greedy for the pursuits of spurious happiness, but we know that growing up can often get in the way.

For this reason I say that University is about love, for what is love if not the meeting of two minds without the impediments that we will soon cultivate as we adopt ‘professional’ personae? Many will leave this University joyful and content, for others there have been tragedies, but for all there has been that overwhelming feeling of being in love with a place, a time, a person, a song, a fleeting moment of perfection. These are the things which give birth to the smiles which will form the wrinkles of our old age.

Passion has driven us through these three years. Not always passion for work, but passion for the extraordinary way of life that we have somehow sustained. We leave exhausted, hungry for new challenges, and a little heartbroken. A part of us will forever be at University, forever thinking that Sainsburys is just too far to walk at the moment, forever eager to continue the conversation until dawn.

It is this love that will remind us of Cambridge, be it the bumps or survivors photos, be it in the people we spend our lives with. It is the love of numbers, shapes, organisms, rules, and dreams which we will spend our lives forever indebted to. Just as the bright side of failing is what you did when you weren’t in the library, the joy of leaving is that you were ever here. That you ever could walk confidently through the gate at King’s without being stopped, that you were ever offered a Big Issue in poetic form, that you know so many brilliant and extraordinary people is the reason this is all worthwhile, and the reason it will be difficult to pack up and go. The point of Varsity articles as I have always seen them is that they give a platform upon which ordinary people may strive to say extraordinary things. I can’t really do the latter half of that. I can ask you all to stop and think about just how much you love the people you know, and how much your lives have been changed by that amazing and mysterious facet of human nature. For my part, I have loved and adored it all, even the bits I really wouldn’t have said I did at the time. Live boldly, escape the shadow of your Cambridge days with even greater heights, try valiantly to be as honest and open as you are now, and remember all the love in this time of pseudo-intellectualism.