Reunions are not for kids

I love reunions. Nothing like seeing friends in a context of nostalgia, even if it means awkwardness with people you once knew but now, for one reason or another, don't really care to know again. I love it enough to pull an all nighter studying in order to make the 7:30 breakfast reunion at Leverett. It was very worth the sleepless night to confirm, once more, that on the surface nothing has changed very much. The place looks the same; the people, older, grayer, less coherent maybe, but still affable, while my friends are as witty as ever. But all are not as they seem. Early reunions like these allow us to glimpse each other zipping along into wildly divergent futures. The experience is invigourating, but largely frightening.

"[Looking around the dining hall] Everything is still the same, huh?"-me.
"Yep. That's good. Isn't it?"-Andrew.

Sure, it is disturbing when we see how much the House kids have grown, or how some tutors are now parents, their babies staring back at us. However, this change somehow feels less confrontational. We expect it, and have no problems integrating it into the fabric that is our memory of this place. We incorporate and obliterate these memories all at the same time, making them fit our notions of how things have always been, and will be. Paradoxically, we are willing to gloss over all this newness, but we are disturbed and intrigued by news of how our own friends are getting along, evolving.

I sense there is something truly comforting about the notion of constancy at Harvard, especially since this place is integral to our notion of self (for the majority, it would seem). To lose the vision of Harvard as unchanging, at this moment, is to lose control over a major part of ourselves, forcing us to confront how uncertainty dictates our current lives, and defines how much we too have been changing in order to adapt. We are in transit, indeterminate, if not physically, then mentally. I sense the farther we go, the more we will reach back. Leverett has not changed, we tell ourselves; Harvard has stayed the same. The dining hall still has the same food; Chief still takes random pictures. In this mental construction, only we have changed, but for now that's okay. We can always reach back and reclaim a bit of our old selves--the ones we knew well--be it via reunions, or spying ' ivy blogs', or constantly visiting [every freaking weekend...errm yeah].

For now, we can only tolerate this much truth. Memory is one of the few things we can still control.