It is difficult for me to submit to joy. It comes clunkily. I look around, abashed. I don’t want to dance too excitedly, sing too loudly, joke too freely—extend myself too much. My joy could be another person’s lame, weird, gross, strange .   This is a lesson I, and almost all of us, have subconsciously learned from a young age. It is difficult to give into free, unabashed, wacky joy because we have been miseducated. As ‘childhood’ ended, and we began to learn math and writing in the classroom, on the playground we began to learn the rules of the game. We learned how to fit in, how to play it cool, how to not be the weird one, how to not give in to joy.   We were miseducated to cringe at the free expression of those kids, either without social sense or wise beyond their years, who did express themselves freely (“band kids” or “theater kids” maybe, guys who moved their bodies a little too much like girls). We cringed for them, already seeing the social consequences of their fr...

An Allegorical Poem Based on Real Events Brutus woke up suddenly on a rock next to the lake. He looked around and felt strange. The lake shimmered and the sun burned on his skin. What was this? Brutus didn’t know what he was doing here. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking or feeling things. He felt very alone. He didn’t know who had put him here, and he didn’t know where to go. He wasn’t like all the other brutuses who went busily about their days, buzzing to the next task and desire until they fell asleep. He wanted to go somewhere. He needed to go somewhere. He wanted to feel comfortable and whole. He wanted to latch on to something, but there was nothing to latch on to. He couldn’t be with his own mind. Where was his home? He wanted to go inside, but there was no inside on the rock. He walked to the shady trees, but he got there and he was still Brutus. There was no crevice to crawl into. Only pounding sun and open sky and existing. Maybe he could get it ou...

“Everything teaches a lesson.” I was feeling disappointed and anxious in the days following an ill-advised wrestling match and concussion. It was the end of a summer spent working at a boy’s camp, and my plans to lead a culminating backpacking trip were now in doubt. My head buzzed with headache if I tried to read, listen to music, or raise my voice. “Everything teaches a lesson.” These were my friend Nemo’s words of consolation. I don’t want lessons — I want to be healthy, to go on this trip, to be able to do everything I enjoy, I thought through tears. His consolation was spotless in its truth and logic, yet, in the moment, unable to console me at all. I’ve now learned that the average concussion heals in two weeks; my concussion experience was not an average one. There are various reasons for this — whiplash, hypochondria, poor management. But what matters is that, over the next three months, instead of recovering, my condition declined. The list of stim...