From Shakespeare to the Matrix
Marissa Knodel
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
—Mary Oliver
One of life’s great ironies is that it is a journey as well as a destination. We are born into a cycle within which our origin and end are predetermined. The inevitability of death may give one’s life a certain direction and definition, for it is the choices one makes along the pathway that determine who one is. The ability to choose is powerful and liberating. In The Matrix, choice represents freedom from an unconsciously controlled life. Awareness and consciousness are the tools by which one unplugs from the system in order to see reality. This allegory always resonated with me because it led me to question what it means to live a conscious life. When does awareness begin? How are choices controlled and manipulated? How can conscious, informed choices lead to empowerment?
As someone who strives to define my life through activism, I am sensitive to the voices crying, “Mend my life!” I even wrote my college admissions essay on it, and how I then defined activism—as something that begins with an enlightened education, then leads to concerned awareness, a sense of caring and compassion, and a drive to take action. I did not scrutinize this drive; I saw it as an obligation, a responsibility we assume both as human beings and as individuals endowed with certain privileges.
During my four years at Dartmouth, I have learned a great deal about the world, and what it means to live in an informed, open-minded, and compassionate way. After all of the classes, clubs, meetings, Hop shows, hikes, dances, friends and conversations; after all of the stress, frustration, excitement, and happiness; I am finally starting to critically question my activist drive. It has taken me a long time and a lot of mistakes and successes to learn one of the simplest and seemingly obvious lessons of living a conscious life: know oneself. I am very good at allowing the voices around me to drown out my own. I am very good at viewing the world as a stage and all the men and women as merely players. I can play a part and adapt as the scene changes and characters enter and exit. In my attempt to come to terms with my irrational, existential fear of death, I resolved a long time ago to live my life completely absorbed in the environment and people around me, to never take a moment for granted. Is it hypocrisy for me to want to “fix” the world when the brokenness I perceive may be a reflection of my own brokenness?
I believe that one’s identity is a construct. Each of us, given diverse environs, folds a whole breadth of experience into a unified definition of self. One of the most valuable lessons I have learned at Dartmouth is that my identity is informed primarily by having a sense of place, a connection to the environment and people around me. Dartmouth is now a part of my identity, with all of its strengths and weaknesses. On June 14th, 2009, I will graduate a much more self-aware person. I will leave Dartmouth with the recognition that self-definition is a dynamic process that incorporates everything from my physical location to the social, cultural, and political aspects of that location and the identities of the people around me.
I frequently have to remind myself that self-reflection is not necessarily a selfish act. Instead, what I do view as selfish is this: ignoring or taking one’s place for granted, and failing to recognize the interconnectivity between our environment and everyone in it. Living an unconscious life leads to paralysis, which is one of humanity’s greatest tragedies. We fail to embrace change as both a challenge and opportunity at our peril, so often only to wake up when some sort of a crisis unplugs our life support—and compels us to use our creativity in the service of self-sufficiency. As John Guare wrote in the play Six Degrees of Separation, “The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to.” In getting there, I will strive to maintain a sense of wonder and open-mindedness. When it’s over, I hope to proudly defy Macbeth and say: my life was not just a walking shadow, and I was more than a poor player strutting and fretting my hour upon the stage, signifying nothing. When it’s over, I want to say, in the beautiful words of Mary Oliver, that all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my
arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and
real.
I don’t want to end up sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this
world.
Peace.
