So. Y'all are graduating. I mean, congrats, I guess. I wish I could say I cared, but I'm kind of indifferent. If I had, like, some friends who were seniors, I'd probably care more.
But I don't.
Because if I did, I'd be crying all over my keyboard right now. Just, you know, wailing, tears streaming down my face, sobbing about how much I'm going to miss them, and how my life won't be the same without them, and how I just want to wrap them up in a hug and never let them go because I won't know what to do with myself next year when I'm all alone.
So it's a good thing I don't have any senior friends. Phew. Glad I can just continue not caring.
*sniffle* *blows nose*
Clearly, I don't do sentimental too well. There's something about syrupy -sweet displays of emotion that make me want to scrub my skin raw. In consideration of my emotional stuntedness, then, I leave all you soon-to-be graduates with a word with which you can be as sentimental as you choose while I can wash my hands of it.
"Hiraeth" is a Welsh word that can be approximated in English by the ideas of homesickness and nostalgia. It's more complex than that, but essentially it refers to longing for a place that has been lost or that can't be returned to. Various explanations define it as a particularly Welsh concept - as in, it's something the Welsh people feel for Wales when they're away from home - but like many of the words I write about, I'll extrapolate the meaning to suit my own purposes - my own purposes being to give you a word not to describe your time at Tufts, but how you'll feel once you leave.
Unless you hated it here. Or unless you're a cold, unfeeling shell of a human being. Or unless you share my lack of facility with sentimental displays of emotion.
But if you're normal and had an amazing four years and today feels bittersweet - and not just because you'll be losing that cushion of justifiable unemployment - then the homesickness and nostalgia and longing for a place to which you can't return that "hiraeth" embodies might currently encompass how you feel about leaving Tufts. It might. I'm not sure. I don't know your life, and I'm only psychic in my superhero-themed daydreams. But it might.
Over the course of writing this column, I've come across a surprising number of words that express differing shades of the bittersweet melancholy that "hiraeth" describes. There's "saudade" (Portuguese), "h??z??n" (Turkish), "toska" (Russian) and a host of others that I didn't bother writing down or remembering because they kind of bummed me out at the time. None ever had quite the same definition or context or feeling as another, so why choose "hiraeth" to focus on? Because I think the idea of longing for a place you can't return to is particularly apt as you graduate. Once you accept that diploma, you can return to Tufts, physically, but you'll always be just a bit out of step with the life you led here. And that's ... "hiraeth."
Well, that was a tad mawkish. My bad. I didn't mean to depress y'all. To the graduating class and, most especially, to all of my "nonexistent" senior friends - who I'm not going to list because this isn't the Academy Awards and none of you got me a shiny gold trophy as a going-away present anyway - I offer my heartfelt congratulations. And don't worry, you're not alone: My mascara's running, too.
*sniffle* *blows nose*
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Falcon Reese is a rising senior majoring in sociology. He can be reached at falcon.reese@tufts.edu.
