In the spring of 2005, as a senior in college with a diploma within grasp in less than two months and thirsty for wisdom wherever I could get it, I wandered into Professor Harry Segal's "Last Lecture" one Monday night in Goldwin Smith Hall.
Segal is a senior lecturer at Cornell University in both psychology and English literature, and the Last Lecture series offers a chance for distinguished professors like him to give their hypothetical last lecture. For Professor Segal, whose CV says that his most recent book was "Possible selves, fantasy, and the Anticipated Life History: Exploring the role of the imagination in social cognition", the topic that night was the psychological depth revealed through narrative.
I don't have the transcript of Professor Segal's lecture-- I wish I did-- but his main idea that night, which I find still reverberating in the back of my mind four years later, was that we are all searching to return to a state of happiness that we found in childhood. It is a longing for the feeling of home that we once had but somehow lost. Home, according to Segal, is not defined by a physical place, but by a comfort and satisfaction that one probably achieved in childhood. I'm not sure what he said about those who didn't, and I'm also certain I'm oversimplifying. The point remains-- according to Segal, we are all on paths to coming full circle.
At the time, I thought this concept was a gross dramatization. Come on! I was beating it out of Ithaca, New York and moving to California to redefine myself! I never realized that I was following a well-beaten path. Not just the hackneyed idea to go west (and I've been hearing from people that east is the new west, but I'd debate that), but the start of exploration, self-discovery, and eventually, self-actualization. It's a path that's been beaten down by literary characters from Holden Caulfield to Gogol Ganguli.
As evidence to Segal’s point, Holden Caulfield rebels against his school and family, but at the same time completely idolizes the youthful innocence of his little sister Phoebe. His famous idea of his personal happiness (arguably, his own sense of home) is picturing himself the sole guardian of many children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff, catching them if they come too close. The catcher in the rye.
After four years out west, I think my own path of self-actualization is now calling for a return east. As well-beaten as the path is west, so too is the return back east. So obvious, it somehow was to everyone but me, that within a week of my arrival to California, a strangely prophetic driver for the casual carpool (and if you don’t know what that is, come west, young man, come west) who I’d shared my story with told me with weird conviction that I’d end up east. If Harry Segal drives a white truck and picks up at Grand/Lakeshore, well, then, I think I have come full circle.
Segal is a senior lecturer at Cornell University in both psychology and English literature, and the Last Lecture series offers a chance for distinguished professors like him to give their hypothetical last lecture. For Professor Segal, whose CV says that his most recent book was "Possible selves, fantasy, and the Anticipated Life History: Exploring the role of the imagination in social cognition", the topic that night was the psychological depth revealed through narrative.
I don't have the transcript of Professor Segal's lecture-- I wish I did-- but his main idea that night, which I find still reverberating in the back of my mind four years later, was that we are all searching to return to a state of happiness that we found in childhood. It is a longing for the feeling of home that we once had but somehow lost. Home, according to Segal, is not defined by a physical place, but by a comfort and satisfaction that one probably achieved in childhood. I'm not sure what he said about those who didn't, and I'm also certain I'm oversimplifying. The point remains-- according to Segal, we are all on paths to coming full circle.
At the time, I thought this concept was a gross dramatization. Come on! I was beating it out of Ithaca, New York and moving to California to redefine myself! I never realized that I was following a well-beaten path. Not just the hackneyed idea to go west (and I've been hearing from people that east is the new west, but I'd debate that), but the start of exploration, self-discovery, and eventually, self-actualization. It's a path that's been beaten down by literary characters from Holden Caulfield to Gogol Ganguli.
As evidence to Segal’s point, Holden Caulfield rebels against his school and family, but at the same time completely idolizes the youthful innocence of his little sister Phoebe. His famous idea of his personal happiness (arguably, his own sense of home) is picturing himself the sole guardian of many children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff, catching them if they come too close. The catcher in the rye.
After four years out west, I think my own path of self-actualization is now calling for a return east. As well-beaten as the path is west, so too is the return back east. So obvious, it somehow was to everyone but me, that within a week of my arrival to California, a strangely prophetic driver for the casual carpool (and if you don’t know what that is, come west, young man, come west) who I’d shared my story with told me with weird conviction that I’d end up east. If Harry Segal drives a white truck and picks up at Grand/Lakeshore, well, then, I think I have come full circle.
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