"I don't want you to sound superstitious or anything," I remember her saying. "I don't read anything into this. But Carolina in My Mind started playing in that shop and I knew that this was where I was meant to be." And I'm sure we clapped or the alumni and staff clapped and smiled and chuckled because we've all been there as alumni-- a song or a picture or even a cloudless blue sky takes us back to a time in our lives we've painted with the brush of nostalgia to see as so wonderful and formative that it must have been preordained, even if we don't really want to call it that.
I wonder what classes that undergrad had been taking when she wrote that reflection and prepared to speak it in front of a bunch of high schoolers. Philosophy? Maybe something that covered epistemology and phenomenology and materialism and idealism and consciousness. Something in the religious studies department? A literature class? Econ? Or just your regular slew of sciences with a psychology or sociology course thrown in, maybe. It doesn't really matter, I guess, when it comes down to it; there's a feeling of folk religion combined with modern secularism in the anecdote and she'd've had those narratives already in place when she walked into the collegiate setting.
(Goodness, those were a lot of words. My mental monologue is a little pretentious at the moment. At the same time, though I might want to blame the dissertation, I know that I've always had a tendency toward the verbose. One of my favorite things in the universe is the word floccinaucinihilipilification. We were always headed down this path. But man, does a year of masters-level study in the humanities feed the word-dragon down in my spirit.)
"I don't want to sound superstitious." That stuck out to me as she spoke and I've always wondered why she said it. I picked Carolina for purely practical reasons: they gave me a better scholarship package and it was a good compromise distance from home. I was antsy when I was a high school senior, same way I am now. I wanted to be somewhere new and I never intended to go to school in North Carolina but half of out-of-state tuition at a school in Florida can't compare with a full ride at a school three hours from home, which is still far enough to be independent but not so far that going back for holidays and big events would be too much of a hassle. I'm sure I prayed over the decision, but there was no math there-- Carolina was my best choice and so I went. I assumed this girl was speaking in the same vein: she wanted to assure us that she wasn't just following a flight of fancy in her choice of university. She was being practical. This weird coincidence simply fell in line with her practicality.
But I don't know her. Maybe she had taken the song in the shop as a sign that she was meant to be at Carolina and she was repeating the narrative because she was going through a rough patch in undergrad, as we all do, and she wasn't feeling very much like she was meant to be anywhere. Maybe this memory was her talisman, her assurance that she wouldn't have been just as happy anywhere else, that that decision meant something important for her life. You do a lot of life-shaping in your late teens and early twenties. Maybe she wanted the assurance from some bigger Something in the Universe that she wasn't screwing that up and that uncertainty came out in this (I swear, it was only like five minutes, why is it stuck in my head today?) talk. Maybe she genuinely didn't think twice about adding in the disclaimer. I don't know her.
For all the practicality of my decision, though, Carolina was absolutely the place I was supposed to be. I made the most of those years and the opportunities that followed. I fell in love with Chapel Hill. I fell in love with my state. I was always putting off falling in love with much else, but that's probably because it's much easier to love an idea than a person. Ideas let you down, you just re-shape them, or caveat them, or justify them, and suddenly they're as good as new and you can love them all over again. I haven't found that level of malleability in people. Plus, you can't make an idea cry. Only other ideas hurt ideas. And if you think about it, the only thing more dangerous than an idea is a person you've turned into the idea of a person in your head.
No one sold me on the idea of coming to Edinburgh. I don't even know where the idea came from, to be honest. I don't know where I first heard of this program or when I thought it'd be a good fit for my life. There was certainly nothing practical about the decision. Maybe I had been practical for too long before this year and felt the need to throw some privilege around. Maybe that's why when people talked about me moving to Scotland they talked about me following my dreams. If the decision had seemed reasoned and practical to anyone, it would've been just another stage in my career rather than this romanticized thing. I can fold this year of my life into the story I'm telling myself about where I'm going but I've been good at telling myself stories since I was in preschool. I never told myself a story where I would live down the street from a cathedral and a castle and up the street from a palace and a(n extinct) volcano, though. That bit of my life has been pretty magical.
I am absolutely superstitious. I've lived through too many ACC basketball seasons to be able to lie to myself about that. The day I drove up to DC last spring to go to an information for the University of Edinburgh, I walked over to the Lincoln Memorial because my car was already parked and why would you read Lincoln's second inaugural address and the Gettysburg address on a computer screen when you have the chance to stand in front of the letters carved into gigantic walls of stone? It's like reading Washington's farewell address. The overwhelming weight of history, the burden of living in times like these, the expectations placed on the American Experiment as it strides and staggers and stumbles forward through the centuries, all of that is chiseled into the memorial, our potential filling in the space the letters leave as they press into the wall. I make a pilgrimage every time I'm in our nation's capital. I can't help it. And on my way back to my car, walking past the Washington monument but not really looking at anything in particular, the moment hit me, a feeling that sits with you like a memory of who you're going to be.
I knew.
Charles Kuralt once asked about Carolina, "What is it that binds us to this place like no other?" and the answer to that is not built on some single inexplicable feeling or the swaying power of strings of beautiful moments. It's built on the idea of a public university, the value of people and the things we can create together. I know this about Carolina. I have a deep love for Chapel Hill that I know didn't spring from nothing. But walking down that street in DC, I felt a spark, a recognition, and an assurance. This was where I was meant to be, one day. I'd have the chance to build something here too.
I feel good about what's coming next, even as I walk the balance between closing out this year and wanting never to leave. One of my new roommates (please dear God let all the paperwork go through this time) just told me that three years goes by so fast and I know that it does. One year flies. I'm tempted to get up with the dawn every day to walk around the city so I can hold it to myself just for a few more days, to jump mentally back to January where the streets were cold but empty and I didn't have to worry about these people who were loving and leaving my town. I understand that I'm going to be gone in two weeks but I get possessive over location. You can't tell me that you're going to love it like I do.
Last week, I couldn't sleep and so I went out to watch the sunrise from the top of Arthur's Seat. I didn't exactly make it up in time, but what I did see was beautiful.
Once it was light enough out, I climbed down a path I hadn't been down before, catching new views of that which I thought had become familiar to the point of dismissal.
I can't tell you that the view of the city is any more significant because I've been here a year. I don't know that time equates to affection. I know that I don't want to feel like this was simply my year abroad that I also happened to get a degree out of. How do you know what something means when you're in it? How do you know whether you're meant to be somewhere until you're there? How are we meant to know anything, really?
Well, at least I can take comfort in knowing that's a question worth asking, even if no one really knows how to answer it.
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