Each year, my undergraduate college sends a book to all returning students for them to read over the summer. Then, upon the students’ return to campus, there is a half-day of presentations and small group discussions on themes prompted by the book. It is an opportunity for everyone in the campus community to engage with a new, big idea and to discuss it together. The two books I remember reading were Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
Well, this year the new college president made an unorthodox decision. Instead of assigning an entire book, she assigned Charles Yu’s “Systems”, a short story written as part of the New York Times Magazine’s Decameron Project. (Click here if you cannot access the New York Times.) At first, I was surprised at the choice: the short story is really short, and it felt like the students were being denied a robust discussion on a big idea that might challenge their paradigms. However, as I read through the story, I began to understand what the president was trying to do. This fall will be the first time all of these students (at an extremely small and extreme tight-knit college) will be together again since March of 2020. A lot has happened since March of 2020, and rather than think forward into some new, big idea, the community needs at least once chance to think backwards and to grieve and process together. Move into a bright future often requires healing a traumatic past.
“Systems” is truly an excellent approach to processing the last two years. As with all high-quality short literature, every phrase has a deep meaning. Yu uses phrases that people may have typed into search engines at different times (using even their common typos and grammar), with the effect of helping us remember the different questions we were asking as different events unfolded. We would do well to pause and consider each search phrase he gives us. We would do well to try to remember how we felt when we asked each of these questions. By digging up our previous feelings, we can integrate them and make peace with them, the kind of peace that will allow us to move forward in freedom.
In a sense, what my undergraduate convocation is doing this year is leading the students through a controlled grieving process. Grieving is nothing more than remembering and learning to turn our remembrances into sources of strength and joy rather than sources of pain and sadness. I hope I can offer you the same. I hope that reading through “Systems” and discussing it in your own small groups may help you grieve what you need to grieve, as we continue to look to a potentially brighter future.
Fr. Moore 