Are We Peaking?

In this excerpt from Wislawa Szymborska’s “The Real World,” the speaker discusses the differences between dreams and the reality, or the real world:

Dreams aren’t crazy –

it’s the real world that’s insane,

if only in the stubbornness

with which it sticks

to the current of events.

 

In dreams our recently deceased

are still alive,

in perfect health, no less,

and restored to the full bloom of youth.

The real world lays the corpse

in front of us.

The real world doesn’t blink an eye.

 

Dreams are featherweights,

and memory can shake them off with ease.

The real world doesn’t have to fear forgetfulness.

It’s the tough customer.

It sits on our shoulders,

weighs on our hearts,

tumbles to our feet.

 

There’s no escaping it,

it tags along each time we flee.

And there’s no stop

along our escape route

where reality isn’t expecting us.

Recently I’ve found myself thinking in the shower a lot and writing a lot about the loss of youth and the gaining of responsibility that comes along with growing up. It’s probably due to my recent birthday and the fact that I’ve just made my fall schedule for senior year and I already have two interviews next week for a summer internship. I feel that what I’ve written has made the future sound like a dark, eerie creature from the swampland of responsibility, but yet something I’m almost ready to K.O.

I still have my moments of “Oh shit, soon (enough) I’m going to be a mid-20s young professional (yuck), and then after that I’ll become wrinkled and boring.” But for the purposes of this week’s column, I’ve decided to ignore the impending saggy future that awaits me, and concentrate on the now.

The speaker in “The Real World” spends much time comparing and contrasting dreams and the real world. One way to interpret the poem is that it’s a literal comparison of the dreams we have while in REM sleep and the world we face while awake. However, I see the poem as a scale with youth on one end and the future on the other, clearly heavier than the youth side. This statement will probably be inspiring to some and melancholy and depressing to others: I’m starting to think that college is really the best we’re going to get.

Are we peaking? Are our college days the high point of our lives? I used to think, “Well, if this is the best it’s going to get, then that kind of sucks.” We may have work and class and other stuff going on, but when else will we be able to just get by without having to worry about major repercussions?

When else can we opt to not wake up before 11 a.m. and be warm and safe on the comfort of our couches by around 3 or 4 p.m.? Plus, after college, if you’re still drinking the large quantities you are as often as you are now, it’s sort of considered a problem (Sorry!) We don’t have much longer to just hang around with our roommates on a Wednesday night, put off our schoolwork until tomorrow, drink some wine and watch two babies babbling at each other on YouTube.

I agree completely with what the speaker says at the beginning of the excerpt: “Dreams aren’t crazy/ it’s the real world that’s insane.” First of all, those lines are just amazing. Second, right now isn’t irresponsibility; it’s just doing what we want to do. It’s the impending future that’s in the wrong and will lose the battle of awesomeness. But, nevertheless, “there’s no stop/along our escape route/ where reality isn’t expecting us.” So let’s all raise a glass of cheap wine to college and drink to the peak of our lives.