Epilogue

I went back to campus today.

It started as just lunch with an old friend, but i bumped into a member of the research group getting out of the elevator (who seemed completely shocked to see me) and promised to drop by the office after
lunch. I guess six months or so is long enough to leave the desk fallow.

Walking down the familiar hallways brought out shadowed fragments of the manic and depressive moments treading the same paths. It surprised me how the memories were all of place: most of the prominent people had moved on so long ago that the echoes have largely died out.

It was nice to see Johnny and Maria, though. The inevitable progression to second year grad psyche was evident, but he's okay. Nobody can keep the first year pace and naivety forever. Nor should they. The undergrads are still incomprehensible to me (probably another species).

I had forgotten how beautiful and enigmatic the light of the setting sun is on the buildings across the way. There's something indescribably alive about this campus that glimmers or rumbles or murmurs impalpably of frenetic, exuberant energy. It makes a person feel that he is missing out on amazing things going on somewhere. There's always something worthwhile and interesting going on somewhere. It can wear a body down.

As perhaps I was unconsciously hoping, my months of time away from this jumbled hive, and weeks of time with family in starkly different environments, have given a detachment that makes the obsessive, competitive, and overloaded ambience of the halls a bit more shallowness. It's okay. There are millions, even billions of people living completely satisfied and fulfilling lives who've never even considered participating in that contest, or attending that weekly seminar. Somehow.

So they are missing out. It's tragic; it still makes me sad, the feeling of loss, but even as it mounts while i walk down the corridor for the Nth time on my way out again, even with that burden of missing
out piling onto me, there's enough perspective to believe that it might really be okay to be only human.