The last time I felt this lonely, I was living by myself on an ostrich farm in the-middle-of-nowhere, Guatemala. I would go for a run every day, find a tree to sit under, and cry. It’s sad, but also funny, in a dramatic kind of way. I was living that maudlin storybook life: drunk on desolation, epiphanies galore.
I walked away from that dang ostrich farm with a very deep understanding of how much I cherish community and connection. I’ve learned that same lesson many times since then, and it seems I am learning it again now.
Before I came to law school, I took a month off to live on a century-old floating commune on the BC coast. Various caretakers have passed it on for generations, and my Aunt and Uncle are the current wardens. I flew out there in a little float plane, looking down at the vastness of trees and ocean. The homestead is beautiful. Rows of ramshackle docks are tied up along the craggy coastline, many buoyant with cedar cabins. A big kitchen floats nearest to the shore, hooked up to solar panels and generators. There’s an outdoor shower with a view too stunning to ever fully appreciate, and a wood-fired hot tub next to the floating vegetable garden. All of the water is collected from rainfall that has dripped through cedar branches. High in vitamin C, costly at any urban spa, it tastes like I’m drinking the forest that surrounds me.
Every morning before breakfast, I would shoot my gun – a wood stock .270 – for target practice, and then swim back and forth across the bay for an hour. I helped to build a gazebo for a new firepit zone, foraged wild plants for lunchtime salads, and pulled prawn traps for dinner. Every day, I walked in the forest or along the beach, and napped for two glorious hours.
Despite being isolated, I never felt lonely. Perhaps it was the lack of ostriches. Perhaps it was the lack of Osgoode. But all kidding aside, it wasn’t the lack of anything that stayed my loneliness, it was the presence of meaningful connectedness. Living, eating, breathing and resting in a place – an ecosystem – that I truly felt part of, nourished something ineffable inside me.
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn once said, “Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.” On that remote coast, I felt this in a new way. I lived off the land and the sea, and I remembered a universe that exists outside of the hip cynicism of productivity and success. I watched bears amble through berry bushes, I followed whales through labyrinthine inlets in a tiny boat, and I imitated ravens until they flew to the shore to get a closer look. I felt joy – unattached from any external measurement of achievement – and I loved my life.
Now, living in this world of cement and letter grades, I can’t help but think that this isn’t real life. Real life, for me, is when I understand where my food comes from, recognize my place in an ecosystem, and have time to cherish my friends and family. Now, I walk on cement, I watch peers rationalize their future role as zealous advocates, no matter the systemic consequences, and I feel so disconnected. I’m surrounded by people every day, yet somehow, I’m as lonely as I was on that ridiculous ostrich farm with not another person in sight.
“To be really human,” David Foster Wallace has said, “is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.” I reached a new level of goo-prone and pathetic when I cried in class the other day, but I also remembered that there’s so much more to being human than this – law school, letter grades, business networking… I came to law school to build meaningful connections with inspiring people, to understand and harness my privilege, and to make the world a better place. I’m not content with dedicating my next three years to suffering; I want to cherish relationships, connect to the earth, and thrive on curiosity and passion. Ultimately, I want to create joy. Who’s with me?