I’m miserable, and there’s a good chance you are too. To be blunt, no one is happy anymore, and I use “anymore“ hesitantly, because I’m not sure they ever were.
I wasn’t going to write this piece, although it’s been stirring in my head for a while, but since I went home this summer I did some extreme self-reflection and realized I am miserable no matter what: geographic location, academic workload, level of healthiness, it doesn’t matter. Miserable is the game, and I’m being played.
Now when I say miserable, I don’t mean unhappy, or even unsatisfied. I have a great life, and great people in it. But in general I am bitter, socially anxious and uncomfortable (physically, spiritually, emotionally; whatever you’re feeling for that adjective): making me a miserable person. Don’t agree with my description, think about it: have you ever been so happy, and yet felt so empty. You’re supposed to feel great, but you’re constantly either; confused, disgruntled, or overly-anxious.
Some of the funniest shows and the greatest novels revolve around this concept. And there is a reason for this. My first example: Ted Mosby from How I Met your Mother. Ted lives a great life, he is essentially the center of attention in his social circle, has great friends, lives in a nice apartment, has a stable and great job; yet he is still miserable. He really is. He spends nine seasons (no spoilers) searching for the love of his life, and reminiscing about it to his children, who don’t care. It’s also seemingly never enough for him, even the great in-between loves. The “transitional” ones, Ted has a problem with all of them and they aren’t enough until the big, explosive, perfect match made in Heaven comes along.
And Ted isn’t alone in this. Jay Gatsby is the literary blueprint of this particular brand of misery. On paper, Gatsby has everything: wealth, status, the kind of parties where strangers flood your house for. But under it all, he’s desperately hollow and he is a phony. All that grandeur is scaffolding for a single goal; Daisy. His entire existence bends toward the hope that one perfect person will fix the ache inside him. It’s Ted Mosby, but with a mansion and no laugh track behind it.
So maybe that’s the trap. Misery hides behind the dream of being completed — the belief that someone, or something, will finally settle the anxiety, the discomfort, the confusion. Ted thinks the right relationship will cure him. Gatsby thinks the right woman will justify everything. Both are wrong. And if I’m being honest, most of us are probably wrong too.
Transparently, I expect to be known. I’ve absorbed all kinds of media — books, films, etc. — that validate that feeling. That one day someone will really see me for me (an allegedly complicated and complex person), and all this confusion will click into place. But that’s the greatest lie. That’s the green light across the bay. Gatsby never reached it, Ted never really did either and most of us won’t either — not because love or connection aren’t real, but because they don’t erase the loneliness baked into who we are.
Which brings me to Cornell. Thousands of students, hundreds of clubs, Greek life, co-ops, teams, endless “communities.” The whole structure of this school is designed to make you feel plugged in, busy, connected (albeit, also stressed). And yet Cornell is one of the loneliest places. No one says it outright, but you can feel it.
We chase our own Cornell green lights: getting into a club, landing an internship, a situationship. We tell ourselves that will be the moment the emptiness dissolves. But it doesn’t. Not really. Because the green light always slips further away. We touch it sometimes, a fleeting moment of joy and then it’s gone, and we’re back to the stress Olympics, back to the grind, back to the misery.
And honestly, I think that’s why so many Cornell alumni end up marrying each other. Hear me out: Cornell itself becomes a great unifier. What bonds people together more strongly than surviving this weird combination of stress, anxiety and isolation? You meet someone who also ate Morrison pizza everyday, who spent all night in the library and who went through the same Cornell canon events and suddenly, you’ve found your Daisy — except this time, they’re real. As cynical as I am, I secretly love the idea of a Cornell marriage (shh, that’s a secret). It’s like finding someone who speaks the same strange, lonely dialect you do. There’s a whole column to be written on that alone — the romance of bonding over Cornell (and the general Ivy League incest). Maybe the one thing that redeems all this loneliness is knowing that at least we’re lonely together.
On the other end of the spectrum people are scared to be lonely – they might not be the most social, or the most uncomfortable, but somehow they become the most codependent. Being lonely is (as we’ve discussed) a miserable feeling. But, relying on someone to function isn’t a good alternative either. Codependency, to me, is more scary than loneliness. Feeling lonely is vulnerable. It’s a learning experience no matter what stage you are in your life – even if you find the love of your life (hopefully a Cornellian, please, do it for me) – you can still be lonely. It’s harder to not rely on someone for your source of social interaction, emotional vulnerability and quality time with others. But, at the end of the day it happens to a lot of people. Personally for me, I will choose independence any day — but everyone’s feelings and priorities are different.
So here’s where I’ll end it: I think I’ll probably always be a little miserable. Not in a dramatic way — just in that nagging, restless sense that no one will ever know me the way I want to be known. And maybe that’s not anyone else’s fault. Maybe it’s because I don’t even know myself in the way I expect other people to (I doubt that, I’m pretty self aware). That’s the cruel trick of loneliness: you can surround yourself and still feel like a stranger in your own life. Gatsby had his green light, Ted had his big love story, and we Cornell. Maybe the real epidemic isn’t just being lonely, but not knowing how to close the gap between who we are and who we want to be (and what we imagine as our dream and unachievable partner).
Chase the green light however you want, at Cornell, it probably flickers out somewhere between everyone’s social anxiety and our collective inability to flirt.
Doctor Love can be reached at love@cornellsun.com. Please get in touch with her; she appears to be miserable (and cynical).
