Excerpt from Healthy Living - With this week’s publication of “The Opposite of Loneliness,” Marina Keegan’s posthumous collection of essays and stories, comes a gift no one ever fully wants to receive — bright and youthful wisdom from a talent who died too soon. Keegan was just 22 years old and five days past graduating magna cum laude from Yale University when she was killed in a car accident on her way to meet her family for her father’s birthday party on Cape Cod. And while she had a brilliant future ahead of her — a job lined up at the New Yorker, a play about to be produced at a theater festival — the rising star had already made a major mark.
When a young person dies, much of the tragedy lies in her promise: what she would have done,” notes Anne Fadiman, a professor and Keegan’s mentor at Yale, in the new book’s introduction. “But Marina left what she had already done: an entire body of writing far more than could fit between these covers.”
Shortly after Keegan’s death, her final essay for the Yale Daily News went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. That piece, “The Opposite of Loneliness,” is the first in the new collection — one that you’ll be grateful is here, in spite of yourself.
2 of Marina's life lesson's which hit home for me.
4. Value life — all of it.
“People are strange about animals. Especially large ones,” she writes in one essay. “Daily, on the docks of Wellfleet Harbor, thousands of fish are scaled, gutted, and seasoned with thyme and lemon. No one strokes their sides with water. No one cries when their jaws slip open. I worry sometimes that humans are afraid of helping humans. There’s less risk associated with animals, less fear of failure, fear of getting too involved.”
5. It’s never too late (even if you’re not in your 20s).
“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds,” she writes in the book’s titular essay. “We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating from college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”
Do you ever a gripping feeling that you are being pushed to do something? Last night as I was headed home from the airport I had this overwhelming feeling to call "T" (a fellow "Peach" person) and check in. It was 10:39 -- way too late to be calling. However, I had 2 voice mails from her I admittedly had not listened to. She picked up the phone immediately. She needed a friend. She was in distress. She needed to hear, "it's OK, I'm here." I've been her. I get it. I love this passage from Rachel Naomi Remen's bestseller, Kitchen Table Wisdom:
As Elementary as the above may sound to some of you, it's real life for a person with mental illness despite the degree of the illness in my opinion. Life becomes overwhelming and we have to stop, breathe, reassess quite often. It's very similar to my entry of frustration from my weekend. I have had to stop, reassess that I can paint one room and that I'm not a failure for not having my entire house ready to photograph for the pages of Elle Decor (ha!).
Marina lesson #5 is for "T": "It's never too late." I recall hearing you say you received summa cum laude honors and a College degree around the age of 50. If that isn't a lesson in "it's never too late," I don't know what is. Today as I write this, I am wearing pants with a drawstring. That is progress my friend. It's funny how something so insignificant can make you feel so powerful. Only "The Peach"patients know why that's important. So put on your tennis shoes with laces, pants with a drawstring and go out into the sunshine and write a beautiful book entry.
"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Dr. Suess
“People are strange about animals. Especially large ones,” she writes in one essay. “Daily, on the docks of Wellfleet Harbor, thousands of fish are scaled, gutted, and seasoned with thyme and lemon. No one strokes their sides with water. No one cries when their jaws slip open. I worry sometimes that humans are afraid of helping humans. There’s less risk associated with animals, less fear of failure, fear of getting too involved.”
5. It’s never too late (even if you’re not in your 20s).
“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds,” she writes in the book’s titular essay. “We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating from college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”
Do you ever a gripping feeling that you are being pushed to do something? Last night as I was headed home from the airport I had this overwhelming feeling to call "T" (a fellow "Peach" person) and check in. It was 10:39 -- way too late to be calling. However, I had 2 voice mails from her I admittedly had not listened to. She picked up the phone immediately. She needed a friend. She was in distress. She needed to hear, "it's OK, I'm here." I've been her. I get it. I love this passage from Rachel Naomi Remen's bestseller, Kitchen Table Wisdom:
I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. And especially if it’s given from the heart. When people are talking, there’s no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they’re saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it.Marina lesson #4 for me is this.... It's easy to take the road of not getting involved and helping others. Heck, there are days when I feel like all I can do is help myself. But the reality for me is I would be kidding myself to close that door -- kidding myself that I don't enjoy those relationships. I'm finding on this journey that focusing on helping other patients with small positives in turn helps myself. Example, "T", I know you want to have this book published and you feel like a failure because it's not anywhere near done. Let's compromise and get 2 entries done per week.
As Elementary as the above may sound to some of you, it's real life for a person with mental illness despite the degree of the illness in my opinion. Life becomes overwhelming and we have to stop, breathe, reassess quite often. It's very similar to my entry of frustration from my weekend. I have had to stop, reassess that I can paint one room and that I'm not a failure for not having my entire house ready to photograph for the pages of Elle Decor (ha!).
Marina lesson #5 is for "T": "It's never too late." I recall hearing you say you received summa cum laude honors and a College degree around the age of 50. If that isn't a lesson in "it's never too late," I don't know what is. Today as I write this, I am wearing pants with a drawstring. That is progress my friend. It's funny how something so insignificant can make you feel so powerful. Only "The Peach"patients know why that's important. So put on your tennis shoes with laces, pants with a drawstring and go out into the sunshine and write a beautiful book entry.
"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Dr. Suess
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