Cecilia Lee

It almost seems like a tagline among the girls who are members in sororities and social groups. “I really never saw myself rushing. I just ended up signing up.” 

It does make sense. A school of stereotypically academically-minded people wouldn’t necessarily be my first pick for a robust Greek Life scene. And although I got into the habit of responding to this comment sympathetically, asserting that I, too, was a little surprised to find myself at the Panhellenic Chixer the week prior, that wasn’t exactly true. In fact, I spent a good deal of last summer diving into various sororities’ Instagram accounts with my friends back home, all of us trying to take a step back and fit ourselves into the pictures.

Picturing the path you will take is a fun and necessary byproduct of youth. The process of rush condenses and actualizes this process of daydreaming — it auditions you for the role of your future self. 

After a couple days of rush I felt like I had a script about myself: I had identified key things that would make me memorable and yet familiar. In the end, I landed on my most extreme examples of sameness: events and facts that fit so well into the genre of “college girl” that they are almost remarkable in their predictability. Most girls surprised me with how they were able to upset my conversational map and unearth things I hadn’t imagined anyone would care to know. And yet my script was always in the back of my head.

At Yale, it’s easy to get swept up in the idea of future utility. You think of people in terms of who they might one day become. Activities in terms of how they could look on a resume. Especially as a first year anticipating the next seven semesters, there is a value in acting with your context in mind.

I have realized that I loved rush because, in my heart, I am a passive yapper. I love chit chat but hate having to establish the pre-chit chat posture or approach someone to strike up a conversation. I was fascinated and inspired by the women I talked to last week, but, had there not been an organized process for me to meet them, I probably never would have. This truth is emblematic of a larger trend that I have been reminded of since starting college, which is the expected period of superficiality that begins a new acquaintance. Especially among women, I think this normative period acts as a sort of vetting process — only necessary when there is the chance of a lasting relationship. It is not that I would not be drawn to or appreciate a stranger’s real identity, but rather that I would be wary of getting close with the type of person who would so willingly bear their whole self.

It was with all of these thoughts floating around that I approached David on Wednesday. He was perched outside the Humanities Quadrangle in the spot where he spends most days hat in hand, asking passersby for change. I offered to buy him something from Common Grounds, and he turned me instead towards Donut Crazy, asking for glazed. When I returned donuts in hand, I asked if I could sit with him for a minute and talk.

It turns out that David and I have more in common than I would have expected. He is also from the South, and is still in shock and awe every time snowfall sparkles on its way down. He also is wary of our new presidential administration. He has more faith than I do, but he also sees God most clearly in the natural world. 

David told me that he never met his father. His mother had him very young, and he was raised by a community of women including his grandmother and aunt. My upbringing likewise required a village and lacked any paternal figure. I told him so, and we took a second to meditate on the coincidences of life, tracking our experiential overlap and feeling its weight.

Our conversation wasn’t as mechanically easy as the ones I had become accustomed to over the previous week of rushing. Most of his sentences trailed off into religious quotations, and there were some long stretches that I struggled to make out at all. 

“Look into my eyes,” he interrupted himself halfway through our chat. “What do you see? The love or the hate?” 

That part came through perfectly clearly, even as I looked at him through watering eyes.

I handed him one of the extra napkins from my donut purchase, and he dabbed at his eyes while I used the back of my hand to swipe away the beginnings of tears. I thought about how I had eagerly brought up my status as the child of a single mom during my rush conversations, aware that it packs the punch of an interesting, yet relatable, edgy, yet narratively typical tidbit. My anecdotes polished the biographical fact until it shone enough to catch the eye of the girls who I wanted to like me like a pearl that catches your eye through meters of murky water.

It’s not a pearl. It’s not anything at all, in fact, other than what it is. The thing about living as the person who you want to be is that you can misplace some of the aspects of yourself you’re not intentionally carrying over — those things that are less a part of your narrative arc than they are a part of your being. In fact it’s hard to make an image of your future self much more than just an image. You lose the dynamics and the dimension and the depth.

It well may be that there are girls I met during rush with whom I will forge long-lasting relationships, and that the foundational bricks laid during those five-minute chats — carefully constructed and evaluated for immediate flexibility as they were — were in fact the most stable ones to build upon. I certainly hope that is the case. 

But regardless of who I turn out to be — whether I am the perfect sorority girl or I shave my head next week or maybe even both — talking to David reminded me that there can be value in something that isn’t building towards anything else. In engaging in a conversation not meant to become anything, I remembered the intrinsic joy of connecting with another human being. Without trying to find any common ground, I found who I am at this very moment.