Arriving at UCL, suspended in the hurried flurry of bodies that seem to endlessly circulate campus, there can be a latent feeling of alienation in this abundance, disconnection despite being amongst so many. Particularly in London, it feels as though everyone has an individual agenda: “friendships” of convenience, networking, advantageous action plans and goals that demand greater things than genuine relationships. I’ve found that in the face of what seems to be an ever-increasing individualism, the modern desire to fashion oneself (winter arcs and self-care), to know oneself (think biohacking and the abundance of body stats: WHOOP bands, Apple watches, macros, supplements), to better oneself at the cost of others, feeling as though you’re a means to an end, that the place of others is sinking.
The mantra of “truly knowing yourself” and “discovering yourself” comes at the cost of cutting others off.
If there’s one thing from my English degree at UCL that I wish to disseminate until I expire it is my renewed faith and belief in others. We need relationships, fleeting eye-contact with strangers, glimpses of connection in passing smiles – as I walk through campus, all I see are bowed heads.
I often find myself grinning on the Tube, as I emerge amidst the flux of students running to lectures from Euston Square, sitting in the library peak exam season, suspended amongst so many individuals and yet hopelessly perplexed in their lives, a childish glee at the beauty and idiosyncrasies of others. It often feels as though our instinctive thoughts of others are hatred, inconvenience, disruption and yet, without them, without you, I could not exist. I could not know myself.
However, to save you from my well-rehearsed (and rather passionate – I did write my entire dissertation on this, yes) lament at the loss of the Renaissance belief in reciprocity, mutuality and inter-dependence, I offer an experience which, for me, still retains these elements that I mourn since enrolling in the London drudge.
Raving.
Exchange the environs of the Main Library for body quaking frequencies and more cardio you’ve done in the past three years. Admittedly, I think I’ve contracted some serious tinnitus induced through my frankly unfounded superiority complex regarding earplugs, but hey, I’m offering you the chance to learn from my terrible mistakes.
Dancing, the number one cure for depression: a hypnotic trance, engulfed in a collective moving body. There’s a required proximity to others without feeling the obligation of feigned pleasantries, of any strenuous interaction at all, in fact, to dance in that space is to interact with the other, a gentle choreography and bodily dialogue with others. To grant others respect. It’s a shared heartbeat, a dissolution of yourself in this marvellous sea of other bodies, it’s forgetting yourself and being completely subsumed by others. We can only define ourselves against the presence of the other and, in this growing insistence on individualism and bettering ourselves at the cost of one another, harmless “self-care” has mutated into a sort of self-obsessive pampering. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for that too, however, particularly in the vast population of UCL, I think we’re forgetting that the fundamental element of existence, of life, at university level and beyond, is the undeniable presence of other people. Others are not just nameless and faceless. They’re not just NPC fillers, bodies to dodge on the pavement. They’re individuals who depend upon you too.
It is only in caring for others, in nurturing our relationships with others (deeply personal and fleeting), that we can establish a better relationship to ourselves, and this must happen, not in our simulacrum of a digital world but in real life.
So, I implore you, take a step into a room throbbing with primitive sounds and writhing people to experience being truly perplexed with others. In being with others, in taking up that shared space where you have to care and look out for others, you’re looking after yourself too. Only in placing faith back into others can you truly find yourself.
