Partying and the Myth of Modern Self-Fulfillment: My Cup Runneth Over - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Partying and the Myth of Modern Self-Fulfillment: My Cup Runneth Over

“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth’s orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.” – Søren Kierkegaard

It’s early on Sunday afternoon as I write this post. The New England air is cool, my bed is comfortable, and the glaze on my morning doughnut tastes like manna after forty years of wandering in the desert (in fact it’s making typing this article an adventure). And all around me are the wondrous reminders of a night gone all too well. The hallway floor is sticky, I haven’t seen another soul yet, and the bathroom down the hall smells like a cabal of homeless people, Phish-heads, and Occupy-Wall-Street protesters (well, now there’s some overlap) had a sing-along and compost party there last night. All of these are the marks of a glorious college experience. Yes, yes. Today is the Sunday after the Saturday after the Friday before the Monday when it all starts again. We’re about to be forced back into the intellectual and social cubicles that many of us call our collegiate lives.

So is that why we party? Is it because existence is otherwise so unbearable that we need to play wizard staff and devalue each other’s self-worth like the Fed devalues currency? Is it because kids just want to watch the world burn in a bonfire of broken glass and even more broken dreams? Although I think there is some truth to the idea that kids need to de-stress, I, as always, beg to differ. I think we want more than togas and Admiral Nelson out of our weekends. I think kids party because it’s fun but also because it’s fulfilling. After a long week of (not so) hard work what could be more validating than walking around shirtless and taking more shots than 2pac in ’94? Clearly nothing, especially when, much like Mr. Shakur, you can get up, throw on a pair of sweatpants and do it all over again.

If any of this sounds like you, you’re not alone. Tons of young adults (this author totally not included because he clearly writes from his pedestal above normal human interaction) face the need for validation. It’s a tough world out there. As Kierkegaard reminds us, however, to seek validation in the frenzied, inebriated reactions of our fellow human beings is a hollow endeavor. While the affirmations of one’s fellow students and colleagues may provide a momentary glimpse of true flourishing, they cannot motivate one to the truest of potentials.

For as St. Augustine tells us, the heart is restless until it rests in God. Now, I’m not going to tell you whether or not you ought to give away all your “goods” and preach the Gospel, but I am going to tell you that the human heart can only find happiness in some absolute pursuit. As Tennyson tells us, we ought “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” And I am pretty sure that there is little (in the long term) to strive for at the bottom of a solo cup. It is tempting, especially in our modern world of fleeting distractions and consumeristic passions to hope for an easy road to happiness, to self-fulfillment. But the good things never come easily and the good always die young, or something like that. Besides at the end of the day, you still need to get up on Monday and go to your Post-Colonial Readings of Pre-Colonial Queer Belgian Literature Seminar.

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