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{shortcode-dd08abb0bb2b02bf4881baaa9fb305566107f8d4}wo months ago, I booked a flight to Detroit.
When I told my friends about my impromptu weekend getaway, I was met — almost uniformly — with incredulity. “I hope you make it back in one piece,” one joked. By the third time I was asked to explain my “interesting” choice of destination, I began to resort to platitudes: “I’m a sucker for cheap flights,” “I want to visit the Midwest,” and the worst offender, “I like traveling.”
I could understand their skepticism. I wasn’t traveling with anyone, and I didn’t have anything to do there. I didn’t know anything about the city, apart from the fact that my parents would protest if they found out I was going to visit it (I still haven’t told them to this day). And I didn’t have any reason for picking Detroit, apart from the fact that I found a $75 round-trip ticket on Spirit while browsing Google Flights during a lecture.
But what my friends didn’t understand at the time was that I wasn’t looking to fly somewhere in particular but just somewhere else. Even though I had returned to campus barely a week before, I desperately wanted to escape, and I remembered that as an adult, I have the autonomy to do as I wish. So I stuffed some clothes into my backpack, made sure it would fit into Spirit’s tiny baggage measurement cart, and stepped onto the plane.
***
For a while, I didn’t understand why I felt the inexplicable urge to leave. Harvard was a pretty nice place, and I was pretty happy here. At least according to my Apple calendar, my weeks were filled with volunteering, classes, and dinners; there was nothing that was clearly missing.
But over the course of several nights spent in the still solitude of Lamont, I began to understand why my days were full but not fulfilling. Each night, I would try to check off items on my to-do list, but I couldn’t shake the nascent feeling that completing these tasks was actually a form of procrastination. I busied myself with emails, problem sets, and six-page essays because I didn’t want to work on myself.
I was once asked in a scholarship interview about the qualities I admire most in others. “I admire people who know what they want in life,” I answered, before instantly regretting my response — as it was clear from the rest of the interview that I didn’t know what I wanted in life myself.
So before I arrived at college, I set this as my only resolution. I wanted to identify which things I did because I enjoyed doing them, and which things I did because I enjoyed having done them: to pad my CV, or feel important, or earn an impressed nod from someone else. More importantly, I wanted to find the courage to do more of the former and less of the latter. I didn’t want to have a life that is worth living only in retrospect, because there can be no retrospection from the grave.
What I didn’t anticipate was how quickly this goal fell by the wayside. When school work piled up, the easiest task to take off was self-work without a deadline. I could schedule club meetings and lunch appointments, but I couldn’t put “Figure Out Life” on my calendar — and so I forgot about it. It was easier to trudge along the path I was already on than to question why I was on that path in the first place.
I had thought that leaving home for the unfamiliar shores of New England would help me see my old life with more clarity. Instead, what became clear was that Harvard’s cloisters were not conducive to introspection unless I wore noise-canceling headphones. While eating quietly in the dining hall, I would hear chatter about consulting slide decks and Jane Street interviews. While brushing my teeth before bed, I would hear conversations about seed funding for a startup through the paper-thin wall.
It is no big secret that many Harvard students get into this university by being very good at appearing successful in others’ eyes. When faced with the dizzying freedom of entering college and adulthood, it is easy for us to continue chasing conventional markers of success: getting a 4.0, joining a consulting club, securing a return offer. But I also realized that hanging around ambitious people is not exactly a good way to figure out what your own ambition is. If everyone else looks like they are working toward something, you feel the pressure to quickly pick something and work towards that too.
So, as I walked back from Lamont on a blustery February night, I decided I needed to leave. I needed to spend some time away from Harvard — even if it was just for a weekend in Detroit.
***
Upon landing, I made my way out of the terminal to catch the only public bus downtown. There was a bus idling noisily by the curb, but the driver was nowhere to be found. I exchanged a knowing glance with a fellow waiting traveler and let out a sigh. My breath turned into wisps of fog.
“It’s cold today, eh?” he said, his shoulders hunched within his puffer.
“Definitely,” I replied, sniffling. “What brings you to Detroit?”
He explained that he had formed a fantasy football league with a group of friends from his college days, and he ended up in Detroit because he had finished last in the league this season. As a punishment, his friends pooled together some money to buy a one-way flight for him to an unknown destination; he had only found out the night before that he would be heading to Detroit, and he — like me — had packed a few clothes, booked a cheap Airbnb, and headed straight to the airport. To complete the forfeit, he would have to spend a minimum of 24 hours in Detroit and document his time there on a small GoPro.
I laughed, admiring his spontaneity and good humor. We spent the journey to the city center swapping memories of college, our hometowns, and watching football (it was Super Bowl weekend). At some point, we took a ‘wefie’ — “for the documentary,” he said.
He then began to film the view outside the window. We were in the middle of nowhere: there were barren trees, occasional billboards, and brick buildings shorter than the telephone poles. But as the bus rattled along the frosty, cracked asphalt, life suddenly felt right. Here were two guys, both trying to — at least for a weekend, or a one-hour bus ride — meet new people and see new places and do new things for no practical reason other than just because. And I knew then that of all the places I could have been that day, I would rather be nowhere else.
It was only towards the end of the ride that he realized we didn’t know each other’s names.
“What’s your name, by the way? I’m Colin.”
“I’m Raphael. It’s nice to meet you, Colin.”
—Magazine writer Raphael Z. Niu can be reached at raphael.niu@thecrimson.com.
