This past week, one of my future housemates gave me a challenge for this column. She texted me (ignoring the very important text I had previously sent her) to say that I should make this column about “Tufts geese s---ing up a storm all over campus and then like to draw some sort of moral parallel to that.”
When I initially got this text (after crashing out about her not answering my important question), I decided not to write about geese because, one, I do not bend my knee when it comes to this column and, two, I had a great idea for this column including an engaging and hilarious story about fighting with the security guards at Tisch.
I stood my ground for about a day until I was walking to class and realized I had a trail of goose poop coming from my brand new shoes. After throwing another temper tantrum on the Academic Quad, I decided that this column should be about those f---ing geese and their poops. And, I guess I am bending my knee to her — but in reality, she is a huge follower of both this column and myself, so it’s the least I can do for a devout and loyal fan.
Those geese are actually going to be the death of me. When I was young, I was once attacked by a goose while walking through a park. It was birthing season for the geese, so they were already super aggressive — either trying to protect their children from me or perhaps wanting to breed with me (I was a cute little boy). As a naive, young child, I decided that I wanted to play with the geese and ran straight at one with a fire in my eyes. The mother goose saw my tiny body running straight towards her children, extended both her wings and took flight right at me. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. A wingspan comparable to a boxer and a beak as sharp as a knife were darting toward my small frame. She, in fact, did not want to breed with me, and I ended up in the hospital and later died (of embarrassment).
Anyway, I personally have PTSD when it comes to geese. Nowadays, I tiptoe and bow my head in submission when I see the geese blocking my path to my next class. Sometimes, I have to give an offering to the geese to get past. Each time I get bullied by the geese, I ask myself, “Why in the world are there so many posted up on campus? Aren’t they supposed to be migrating down to a warmer place?” I can tell you from personal experience — the academic quad is not very warm.
Each time I think about those geese, I always think about flying — which has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. (Was it induced by a goose flying directly at me, trying to kill me? Perhaps, but I digress.) Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever fly; I’ve come to terms with that. However, flying can be defined in many different ways, not just “moving or able to move through the air with wings” (here comes that insane transition).
When I was little (actually around the same time I was attacked by that goose), I was infatuated with Greek mythology — especially the story of Icarus and Daedalus. For those who don’t know, the myth is essentially Daedalus making wings for himself and Icarus to escape imprisonment. However, after a multitude of warnings not to fly too close to the sun, Icarus, in fact, flew too close to the sun, his wings burned, and he fell to his death. While the overall myth is about the consequences of ignoring instructions and warnings, I found the most intriguing part of the story being its supplementary poem where there is the line: “Icarus laughed as he fell.”
For a while, I didn’t understand that idea — as he fell to his death, Icarus smiled? This line seems antithetical to the story of Icarus. It took me a long time to grapple with the thought of laughing and smiling in the face of certain death, but as I’ve grown older and more mature, I’ve learned the importance of this idea.
Yes, Icarus fell, but before he fell, he flew — and, more importantly, he couldn’t have fallen without having flown before.
That’s the unruly, arduous balance of life. You don’t get to fly without accepting the possibility of falling. And you don’t get to fall unless you were soaring beforehand. It’s a perpetual cycle — an inevitability we accept the second we dare to chase something off the ground.
I think about those geese and how they just take flight without hesitation — wings flapping widely, fully committing to whatever direction they are heading. They don’t second guess; they just go. And sure, sometimes they nosedive, and sometimes they land in the middle of the Academic Quad, making everyone late to class — but they never stop flying. They never let the fear of falling keep them from taking off again.
And maybe that is the whole point: We can try to avoid failure and never leave the ground — but then we would never know what it feels like to fly. The only way to experience flight is to embrace the risk of falling. And the only way to fall is to have left the ground in the first place.
So, to my future housemate: Here’s your column on goose poop. And to the geese on the academic quad: You know what, maybe, just maybe, we should be learning from you all.
Pooping,
Ben Rachel
