On the Cultivation of Brotherhood and the College Experience
A Personal Essay for the Spring 2018 Issue of The Current.
Note: This personal essay was originally published in the Spring 2018 issue of The Current, a student-run magazine at Columbia University. I have decided to re-publish the essay here in order to share it with readers of the blog. A link to the original can be found here.
When the man I have come to call my brother bared his soul to me, it let loose in a tidal wave of emotion the sentiment that he did not have a reason to breathe any longer. At this low point, he displayed existential exhaustion — not a desire to end life, but just a loss of the will to live. My first impulse was to fill in the gap of silence that had been left by his finality with my words — to make a plea that his life would be a good one going forward. He could make amends with his family, find love with the right person, and learn from his mistakes. I began to utter words to this effect, but then stopped, realizing that as much as I wanted to help him, there was no wise phrase I could come up with in that moment; I only needed to listen, and he only needed my spirit to be alongside his. That was enough.
The man I call my brother had been spared his life by the hands of fate. He fought in wars; he watched as his fellow soldiers lost their lives and he came close to losing his own. Many times he accepted death, but it refused to take him. By the end of his service, no adulation from the public nor the appellation of a hero could wash away his burden as a survivor. Such a reality is far from my own — I will likely never understand what it is like to lose as much as he has. But I listen anyway.
There were times growing up when I felt like I lived in the smallest family on the planet. My mother and I are both only children, and my father’s only sister decided never to have any of her own. There are only four living members of my family on the American continent and two remaining in Europe. We have all drawn close together as a result, clinging to one another with an instinctive understanding of how precious each individual in our small family is.
I remember my grandmother reflecting melancholically, yet matter-of-factly on all of this, as I sat one day in her apartment, explaining to me that our extended family in Europe had been wrenched from us during World War II. In the chaos and breakdown of civil society at that time, tightly-knit communities that had been built up over centuries were ripped apart by the Nazis in what seemed like an instant. People who did not realize they were saying goodbye for the last time never saw each other again. Our family lost its place in a network and became isolated, alone, stranded. At an early age I never quite knew what to make of this fact. Hearing my grandmother talk about the tragedy of the Holocaust made me feel downcast at times, but we had each other. Sometimes people told me about their huge family gatherings where they had never spoken to several people in the room; I would think of the six people in the world I could call my blood.
My mother used to ask me if I wanted a sibling, but I vehemently voiced my opposition. It was probably just childhood selfishness; I did not want anyone to get in between the relationship I had with her. As time went on, I gradually came to regret my certitude. I realized that I needed someone to call my brother in a deep, human sense. If the world was not going to give me blood brothers then I would have to go out and find my own. Fate was what propelled me to give all of myself to my friends.
The importance of brotherhood reaches far back to ancient philosophies across the world. In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle maintained that the truest friendship consists of people who value virtue in one another. As friends, we take on burdens that are not our own and that will not offer us direct benefits. When our friends are stuck in a hole, we expend energy at a personal cost to pull them out because we believe that the world is a better place with them here. We believe in our friends and their character and manifest that belief through our actions. These actions in turn vindicate our own being to the core, because our friends think the same of us.
In traditional African ethics, too, the concepts of humanity and brotherhood are fundamentally intertwined, suggesting that what makes us human is our willingness to devote ourselves to the well-being and aims of those close to us, which in turn become our aims and goals. Brotherhood in this philosophical framework is a broad concept, extending beyond the boundaries of strict familial relationship and ethnicity, and out to all of humanity. It follows, then, that we can find brothers half a world away without a blood connection. We are all bound by the experience of living as if by a slender string that hums invisibly in the background.
In the context of discussions surrounding mental health at Columbia, the deep value of meaningful friendship bears repeating because the latter is, in many senses, a sacrifice and a claim on our time. In certain circles here, a different ethos pervades. It is one of radical individualism, which silently forms the subtext of many interactions. Many people seem to live as if a successful college and life experience were a zero-sum competition in which one person’s success is another person’s loss. They see the Columbia experience as an opportunity to form friendships for the sake of utility; to extract maximum personal and professional benefit from those they meet. After all, this hyper-competitive, self-focused, almost Ayn Randian attitude is what delivered many people to the gates of college walk to begin with.Â
But there are real drawbacks to such a philosophy. Those who think they are making the very best use of their college experience by only pursuing their goals single-mindedly are actually missing out on something special in the human experience. We have much to do for ourselves in life, but this cannot be accomplished without the proper support. Taking on responsibility for the well-being of another person is archetypal for humans. It uplifts us in our own struggles and serves as one of the most meaningful experiences a person can have. My time spent with my closest friends attests to that.
As I sat silently, facing the man I call my brother in his dimly lit apartment, I thought about our connection and how everything has a reason and a place. Like me, he had grown up without brothers in his family. That dark night we shared together, he relived all the pain of his life before me. I saw him sink to his lowest depths and then, after expressing himself, rise slowly to the surface again.
On his good days he tells me that he is making strides towards self-improvement. He says that he wants to give back to others as a way of showing his gratitude for surviving the war. He sees in me a younger version of himself, and he wants to help me avoid making the same mistakes that he has made. It is deeply moving and motivating to have someone so committed to my future. Having someone believe in me gives me reason to believe in myself.
On the bad days he tells me to come by his apartment and drag him out into the sunlight. I do it days in a row until he starts to feel better. Each time I arrive at his door we go through our ritual. I ask him how he is doing. He perks up a bit when we start walking and conversing. I tell myself that despite my many deficiencies I am at least there for someone else.Â
Now that my friend is doing better, he is the one who has to drag me out of my dorm to the library. I hear a knock on my door. It’s him holding me to task just as I had done before. As I leave my room behind and start walking, I realize that I will be spending a lot of time over the coming weeks poring over books in a silent room, which would ordinarily dampen my spirit. But when we arrive, I realize that I’m smiling and my spirits are higher, because even without words between us, sitting alongside my friend makes me feel that an impersonal, expansive place does not have to be so lonely after all. Â
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Throughout my years at Columbia, I have done what I can to be a source of light for my friends in their darkest times, and this in turn has illuminated my life. Through their stories I learn of challenges I am lucky never to have known and gain wisdom I could not hope to find by myself. In my friendships I sometimes feel as if a cosmic current is flowing through me, passing from my older and wiser friends through me and to my younger friends. As I pass on the knowledge I have acquired, I start to sense my place in a grand tradition and in a strange way feel like I have found the extended family I have always searched for. Suffering is built into the fabric of existence; we are all broken in one way or another. But we do have our friends to help us navigate the unknown. And if the narrative arcs we forge alongside those closest to us redeem even a small part of the trials of life, then forging them is worth it.
Image courtesy of Web Gallery of Art.
Solid piece. Thank you for being you brothaman... nothing but love.
Heavy article, I look forward to catching up in person over a cocktail.