Cornell: The Questions of My Life Take Shape

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After high school, I went to Cornell University to study engineering.  In college, one of the things I began to become ever so slightly conscious of was my discontent with life.  I wasn’t really interested in what I was studying.  There wasn’t anything really that I could think of that I wanted to study and what I was learning didn’t seem to penetrate my thinking.  There were things that I didn’t understand in class, but then would sort of “get” when I was out in life.  For example, I never understood the very simple concept of relative speed when I was taught it in the classroom.  It was just vectors and equations.  It had no meaning to me.  Then, the following summer, I was driving along the highway when a car passed me.  I looked over at the driver; saw her coasting by me, and the light bulb went on.  In that moment, I “got” relative speed.  In retrospect, it seems ridiculous because it’s such a basic concept.  

I think part of the problem was I didn’t want to understand these things.  I wasn’t interested in how to solve equations.  I was interested in understanding life; but not from an academic perspective – like studying psychology or philosophy.  Even then, I wanted to understand life and how to live it.  My psychology class explained certain things to me about the inner workings of the mind, but it didn’t tell me whether I should ask a certain girl out, or what classes I should take, or what I should do with my life.   I wanted to understand why my good friend Otis could go to a party and be someone who was going home with someone that night; while I could be at the same party with the same people and be someone who had no shot?

I realize that it’s not a very deep question.  On it’s face, it’s shallow, but that’s only because I was eighteen years old and those were the concerns of an eighteen year old.  Even then, I knew I wanted my life to be about something else, but I couldn’t see beyond what life was putting in front of me.  I was looking for something that didn’t seem to exist anywhere.  Still, even in the concerns of an eighteen year old, the questions were beginning to take form.

In those days and even today, I came off to most as aloof.  It was odd to me because I knew that impression wasn’t who I was.  People were often surprised at who I was once they got to know me.  The thing I couldn’t articulate to them then was, like relative speed, I was just trying to make sense of it (life), of them, and of me.  Mostly, it didn’t make any sense to me, and so I came off as being uninterested in them.  In reality, I was completely fascinated with them, so much so that I didn’t fully realize that I wasn’t participating with them; instead, I was studying them, it (life), me.  Yes, perhaps, I was missing the point, but it didn’t even occur to me that there might be a point I was missing.  At that time, I had enough awareness to ask questions, but I wasn’t aware enough to challenge the questions I was asking.  I was just caught up in the fascination of it all.

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