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KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness

Staff Reporter

opposite of loneliness essay

The piece below was written by Marina Keegan ’12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012’s commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves…” “if I’d…” “wish I’d…”

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. 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 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.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

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The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

Marina keegan , anne fadiman  ( introduction ).

208 pages, Hardcover

First published April 8, 2014

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We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time…What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.

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A student stood up. Thin. Beautiful. Long, reddish-brown hair. Long legs. Flagrantly short skirt.

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We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out—that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it: already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.
Everyone thinks they’re special—my grandma for her Marlboro commercials, my parents for discos and the moon. You can be anything, they tell us. No one else is quite like you. But I searched my name on Facebook and got eight tiny pictures staring back. The Marina Keegans with their little hometowns and relationship statuses. When we die, our gravestones will match. HERE LIES MARINA KEEGAN, they will say. Numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I’m so jealous. Laughable jealousies, jealousies of everyone who might get a chance to speak from the dead.

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About The Author

Marina Keegan

Marina Keegan (1989-2012) was an award-winning author, journalist, playwright, poet, actress, and activist. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times ; her fiction has been published on NewYorker.com, and read on NPR’s Selected Shorts ; her musical, Independents , was a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Marina’s final essay for The Yale Daily News , “The Opposite of Loneliness,” became an instant global sensation, viewed by more than 1.4 million people from 98 countries. For more information, please visit TheOppositeofLoneliness.com.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Scribner (April 14, 2015)
  • Length: 256 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781476753911

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Raves and Reviews

“In her brief life Marina Keegan managed to achieve a precocious literary mastery. Her wry, wise, lyrical voice is unforgettable, and her vital, exuberant spirit reminds us powerfully to seize the day. Though every sentence throbs with what might have been, this remarkable collection is ultimately joyful and inspiring, because it represents the wonder that she was.” —J.R. Moehringer, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of The Tender Bar “I will never cease mourning the loss of my beloved former student Marina Keegan. This book gives partial evidence of the extraordinary promise that departed with her. Throughout she manifests authentic dramatic invention and narrative skill. Beyond all those, she makes a vital appeal to everyone in her generation not to waste their gifts in mere professionalism but instead to invest their youthful pride and exuberance both in self-development and in the improvement of our tormented society.” —Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities and English, Yale University “Many of my students sound forty years old. They are articulate but derivative, their own voices muffled by their desire to skip over their current age and experience, which they fear trivial, and land on some version of polished adulthood without passing Go. Marina was twenty-one and sounded twenty-one: a brainy twenty-one, a twenty-one who knew her way around the English language, a twenty-one who understood that there were few better subjects than being young and uncertain and starry-eyed and frustrated and hopeful. When she read her work aloud around our seminar table, it would make us snort with laughter, and then it would turn on a dime and break our hearts.” —Anne Fadiman, Yale University Professor of English and Francis Writer in Residence and author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and Ex Libris “Illuminates the optimism and neurosis felt by new grads everywhere. . .Like every millenial who's seen irony elevated to an art form, Keegan brings self-awareness to the collective insecurity of her peers even as she captures it with a precision that only comes from someone who feels it too. How unfortunate that she will never know the value readers will find in her work.” — Publishers Weekly “Funny, poignant, tender, and fiercely alive, The Opposite of Loneliness contains the keen observations of a short lifetime—and the wisdom of a much longer one.” —Jennifer DuBois, author of Cartwheel and A Partial History of Lost Causes “The writing Marina Keegan left behind offers a tantalizing taste of a literary voice still in development, yet already imbued with unusual insight, nuance, humor, and sensitivity.” —Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor of The New Yorker “Two years after a young writer’s death, her words soar. . . . The Opposite of Loneliness... sparkles with talent, humanity, and youth. The prose, polished but thoroughly unselfconscious, is heartbreaking evidence of what could have been.” — O Magazine "A bittersweet, what-might-have-been book filled with youthful optimism, energy, honesty, and beyond-her-years wisdom.” — Yale Alumni Magazine “ The Opposite of Loneliness captures in both fiction and nonfiction [Keegan's] adventures in love and lust, the weird bliss of being stoned, and, as she writes, what it’s like to see 'everything in the world build up and then everything in the world fall down again.” — Elle “Remarkable... a compelling literary voice... the appeal of this collection is its improvisational quality, its feeling of being unfinished but always questioning.” — Chicago Tribune “How do you mourn the loss of a fiery talent that was barely a tendril before it was snuffed out? Answer: Read this book. A clear-eyed observer of human nature, [Keegan] could take a clever idea...and make it something beautiful.” — People Magazine “A triumph...Keegan was right to prod us all to reflect on what we seek from life.” —Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times “ The Opposite of Loneliness does [Keegan's] talent and memory justice, both as a picture of a generation entering adulthood and as a highly personal portrait of a gifted young woman.” — Pittsburgh-Post Gazette “What a gift Keegan has left behind. Not only in her written words...but also in her legacy of social activism and fierce belief in leading a life of purpose, not privilege.” —Joseph P. Kahn, Boston Globe “Keegan’s fiction… is built around the kind of empathetic extrapolation that makes for all the best realism… Keegan would have been—would have continued to be—a star. She would have been famous, not quietly or vaguely, but really, really famous.” — The New Republic “[Keegan ] was one of the most present, incisive, and hopeful writers.… That’s the gift and the pain of her book. How incredible, how lucky, that we get to read her words, that people who never knew her or her work can find it for themselves, that she was in some way given the chance to speak to the world the way she wanted.” — Buzzfeed “A glimpse of a young woman who is growing as a writer and a person, someone who’s thinking deeply about love and the world around her and the scale of the universe….I have no doubt she would have been great.” — Bustle “In the little time [Keegan] graced the world she created a life’s work many writers could only dream of achieving in decades.” —MariaShriver.com “This posthumous collection of essays and short stories is beautiful and brilliant, young but not childish—just like the author was. Every essay is a gem you want to pick up and put in your pocket, taking it out from time to time to see how it looks in different lights—the lights of promise and potential, yearning and memory. The Opposite of Loneliness will make people cry and hope.” — Rewire Me “The loveliest piece of writing I’ve ever seen from someone so young… Her voice is steady and often very funny, her senses of character and pace are frighteningly good, and the flow of her prose is easy to get carried away by. She wasn't just college-talented; she was talented, period.” —Kevin Roose, New York Magazine “A new voice of her generation.” — The Hartford Courant “Wonderful... Marina Keegan did that thing we all want to do as writers: say what everyone else is thinking, but better.” — Refinery29 “Inspirational.” — The Huffington Post “Full of uncanny wisdom...Marina would not want to be remembered because she was dead. She would want to be remembered because she’s good. No worries there, Marina. You left us aching for more.” — Detroit News “A talented voice, silenced too soon, endures...throughout there are reminders of the talent of this forever-22-year-old.” — The Improper Bostonian

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Invisible Girl

‘The Opposite of Loneliness’ by Marina Keegan

A keen collection of stories from a light that dimmed too soon.

opposite of loneliness essay

When Marina Keegan wasn’t tapped to join one of Yale’s secret societies, she gave herself less than two hours to wallow in disappointment, then pledged to spend the time she would have spent “chatting in a tomb” writing a book. Five days after graduation, Keegan was killed in a car accident on Cape Cod. She was 22.

“The Opposite of Loneliness” is a record of that time better spent. The book of nine short stories and nine essays takes its title from Keegan’s last essay to appear in the Yale Daily News, which went viral in the days after her death when it was read by 1.4 million people in 98 countries. In it Keegan writes with an eerie urgency: “We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”

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The introduction, by Anne Fadiman (Keegan’s writing professor at Yale), sets the tone for the collection. She describes Marina’s determination to become a writer, and brings her to life — she was always losing her keys in her bag; she complained when her roommate used the same knife to cut bread and spread Nutella — without ever slipping into sentimentality. This book is not a posthumous vanity project; Keegan’s writing is intimidatingly good. When she died, Keegan was already well on her way to becoming an established writer, earning coveted internships with The New Yorker and The Paris Review. She had a job lined up at The New Yorker after graduation, and an apartment waiting in Brooklyn.

It would be, however, dishonest to say that her death doesn’t add another dimension to these stories. Some seem like chilling premonitions but there is nothing sentimental on these pages. Keegan’s storytelling is so strong that the reader quickly becomes invested in the characters’ struggles, forgetting about their author’s life and death. While unsettling at times (the hair on my arms stood on end more than once), the feeling of being socked in the stomach doesn’t come from remembering Keegan’s death, but instead from the gut-wrenching vulnerability of her characters.

In “I Kill for Money,” Tommy, the obnoxious exterminator who cracks jokes incessantly,confesses that he releases squirrels into the wild, rather than drown them as the law requires. In “Winter Break,” the protagonist watches her mother trudging through the snow alone with her spaniel and later reflects, “I thought of my mother circling suburbia while I drank in dim fraternities or video-chatted with Sam or slept lazily in my dorm while it snowed out my window. I loved her in that moment in a way that twisted my stomach.”

Another strength: Keegan writes her age. A keen observer of the human condition, of herself, and of her generation, she uses the vernacular: “things,” “stuff,” “hooking up,” and “butts.” She writes about smoking weed, red plastic cups, microwaving Thai soup, the pangs of realizing a parent’s mortality, and of first love. She writes about friends who are protective of one another, as well as the failures of friendship, how college kids sometimes try to sound older than they are, and what it’s like to envy those who have already figured out who they want to be.

But Keegan doesn’t rely solely on her perspective as an observant, brilliant, self-aware college student. Some of the strongest stories in the collection take place in Baghdad, or 36,000 feet under the sea, or from the perspective of a hypochondriacal former ballerina. She often places her characters in horribly uncomfortable situations then writes about their efforts to escape. Keegan does not shy away from risk — either in setting, character, or form — and it pays off.

In “Challenger Deep” five people trapped at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine in total darkness await rescue. The story opens and concludes with the protagonist, Patrick, waiting by the periscope for schools of florescent jellyfish to float by and illuminate the blackness (the jellyfish may also indicate an ascent to the surface). The philosophical and psychological nature of being isolated in the dark brings to mind “Moby-Dick” (which Keegan alludes to in an essay titled “Why We Care About Whales”) and like Melville’s masterpiece, “Challenger Deep” works on multiple levels.

“The Emerald City” is told through a series of e-mails from William, a Coalition Provisional Authority officer working in Iraq’s Green Zone, to his girlfriend, Laura, back home in the States. Through his letters, he gradually becomes disillusioned by the US presence in Iraq, and we learn that he accidentally aids a coordinated mortar attack on the Green Zone, killing dozens, including one of his friends. The e-mails end after William confides in Laura that he and his Iraqi translator have decided to escape to the desert in order to avoid a lengthy sentence for conspiracy. Even though the drama accelerates gradually and is crafted through a series of one-sided letters, the story is gripping.

As Fadiman points out in the introduction, “When a young person dies, much of the tragedy lies in her promise: what she would have done. But Marina left what she had already done: an entire body of writing, far more than could fit between these covers.” So it isn’t a question of whether Keegan would have made it as a writer, but rather, what we have lost. What more might she have done had she lived for another 50 years?

In “Song for the Special,” Keegan writes that she once attended an arts conference in which everyone was “scrambling to meet everyone, asserting their individuality like sad salesmen” and she was the only person without business cards. “I read somewhere that radio waves just keep traveling outward, flying into the universe with eternal vibrations. Sometime before I die I think I’ll find a microphone and climb to the top of a radio tower. I’ll take a deep breath and close my eyes because it will start to rain right when I reach the top. Hello, I’ll say to outer space, this is my card.” Through these stories and essays readers can feel the powerful reverberations of Keegan’s singular voice.

Sophie Flack, author of “Bunheads,” has contributed to The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, and O Magazine. Follow her on twitter @sophieflack.

Bella DePaulo Ph.D.

What Is the Opposite of Loneliness?

Sometimes the opposite of loneliness has nothing to do with social interaction.

Posted February 27, 2021 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

  • Understanding Loneliness
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On the eve of her graduation from Yale in 2012, Marina Keegan wrote an essay that, within about a week, would be read by well over a million people from 98 nations. It was called " The Opposite of Loneliness ."

But what is the opposite of loneliness ? Keegan opened her essay by noting that we don't have a word for it, but whatever it is, she found it at Yale:

"It is not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's four A.M. and no one goes to bed… "Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights…"

That essay opens a collection of Keegan's writings published under the same title, " The Opposite of Loneliness ." (Here is my review of it.) The question it poses, what is the opposite of loneliness, still resonates. I think people who are single at heart might answer that question in a way that would seem counterintuitive to others.

The single at heart are people who live their best, most meaningful, and most authentic lives as single people. I'm one of them. I rarely feel lonely, and when I do, it is usually when I'm with other people. One time, when I was living in Charlottesville, Virginia, I was walking the downtown mall with a friend I always loved talking to – she's smart, wryly funny, and great at getting to matters of depth. We happened upon a big table of colleagues who were laughing and talking. She wanted to join them. I sat for a while, but their conversation was so superficial and so inane, it made me feel lonely. I made an excuse and left.

Another time, two couples wanted to treat me for my birthday. I looked forward to it. But they spent the night talking about babies and daycare. The whole night. (I have no kids.) That, rather spending my birthday home alone, is the definition of loneliness.

I like the examples Keegan gives of the opposite of loneliness. But I'd add to them the experiences of being all by yourself and feeling so engaged in whatever you are doing that you don't even notice how much time has passed or that you're actually pretty tired. (I think that is an example of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls " flow .") The opposite of loneliness is realizing the answer to what you were puzzling over when you weren't trying to figure it out – during a long walk, for instance, or in the shower or just as you are falling asleep or waking up. The opposite of loneliness is feeling grateful for all of the people in your life you cherish, even (especially?) when you don't see them all the time.

The opposite of loneliness is JOMO – the Joy of Missing Out . For me, that's when I'm delighted not to feel obligated to participate in social events that don't interest me. I stay home and revel in my solitude or pursue the social engagements that really do engage me.

Alone is not lonely. Alone is a neutral description of a state that can be experienced any number of ways. Loneliness is, by definition, painful. The opposite of loneliness is contentment or joy. It is living your most meaningful life, the life you want to live rather than the life you think you should be living. For me, the opposite of loneliness is living single.

Facebook image: mavo/Shutterstock

Bella DePaulo Ph.D.

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D. , an expert on single people, is the author of Single at Heart and other books. She is an Academic Affiliate in Psychological & Brain Sciences, UCSB.

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THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS

The title essay of marina’s book was her final message to her college classmates, distributed in a special edition of the yale daily news at the 2012 commencement exercises..

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.   It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.   Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.   This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.   But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves…” “if I’d…” “wish I’d…”   Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.   But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.   We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.   When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck. For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…   What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. 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 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. In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.   We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that. We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

–– Marina Keegan

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"Opposite of Loneliness" by Marina Keegan

Yale 22-Year-Old Writes Essay on Life, Then Dies

May 30, 2012— -- The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the Yale Daily News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. What I'm grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I'm scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can't remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers -- partner-less, tired, awake. We won't have those next year. We won't live on the same block as all our friends. We won't have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse -- I'm scared of losing this web we're in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They're part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn't live in New York. I plan on having parties when I'm 30. I plan on having fun when I'm old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd "should haves..." "if I'd..." "wish I'd..."

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We're our own hardest critics and it's easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I've looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we're all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we'll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that's okay.

We're so young. We're so young. We're twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There's this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it's too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it's easy to feel like that's slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we've had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

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COMMENTS

  1. KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness

    KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness Marina Keegan 3:10 am, May 27, 2012 Staff Reporter The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

  2. Home

    The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. An affecting and hope-filled posthumous collection of essays and stories from the talented young Yale graduate whose title essay captured the world's attention in 2012 and turned her into an icon for her generation.

  3. Marina Keegan

    The Opposite of Loneliness A collection of Keegan's works, both fiction and non-fiction, was published posthumously by Scribner on April 8, 2014. [8] The book is named after her graduation essay and features an introduction by the American author Anne Fadiman, who was one of Keegan's professors at Yale.

  4. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

    The Opposite of Loneliness is an assem­blage of Marina's essays and stories that, like The Last Lecture, articulates the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world. Genres Nonfiction Short Stories Essays Memoir Contemporary Biography Audiobook

  5. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories Paperback

    The Opposite of Loneliness is a collection of her short stories and personal essays, all of which were chosen by Anne Fadiman (her college professor and friend) after Marina's death. She is remembered as the talented writer that died after her graduation, but for me that doesn't do her justice.

  6. The opposite of loneliness : essays & stories

    The Opposite of Loneliness is an assemblage of Marina's essays and stories, which, like The Last Lecture, articulate the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be, and how we harness our talents to impact the world"-- Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2019-09-20 11:22:25 Bookplateleaf 0006 Boxid IA1665718

  7. The Opposite of Loneliness

    Marina Keegan wrote the essay "The Opposite of Loneliness" specifically for her Yale graduation in 2012, and the single line "The hats" refers to the college's Class Day tradition of seniors wearing creative, colorful hats. Yet many readers have found its message to be universal, evoking their own days at college, at camp, or in any ...

  8. The Opposite of Loneliness : Essays and Stories

    The Opposite of Loneliness. : The instant New York Times bestseller and publishing phenomenon: Marina Keegan's posthumous collection of award-winning essays and stories "sparkles with talent, humanity, and youth" (O, The Oprah Magazine). Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012.

  9. What Is the Opposite of Loneliness?

    The whole night. (I have no kids.) That, rather spending my birthday home alone, is the definition of loneliness. I like the examples Keegan gives of the opposite of loneliness.

  10. 'The Opposite of Loneliness' by Marina Keegan

    "The Opposite of Loneliness" is a record of that time better spent. The book of nine short stories and nine essays takes its title from Keegan's last essay to appear in the Yale Daily News ...

  11. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

    The Opposite of Loneliness is an unforgettable collection of Marina's essays and stories that articulates the universal struggle all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to impact the world. "How do you mourn the loss of a fiery talent that was barely a tendril before it was snuffed out?

  12. What Is the Opposite of Loneliness?

    That essay opens a collection of Keegan's writings published under the same title, "The Opposite of Loneliness." (Here is my review of it.) The question it poses, what is the opposite of ...

  13. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

    The Opposite of Loneliness is an assem­blage of Marina's essays and stories that, like The Last Lecture, articulates the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world. Read more ©2014 Tracy and Kevin Keegan (P)2014 Tantor Listening Length

  14. What Is the Opposite of Loneliness?

    What Is the Opposite of Loneliness? Sometimes the opposite of loneliness has nothing to do with social interaction Posted February 27, 2021 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina On the eve of her...

  15. The Opposite Of Loneliness Essay

    Keegan's essay, "The Opposite of Loneliness", discloses college students' mixed emotions of happiness, fear, and uncertainty. Her powerful writing connects her readers to their own personal experiences. Whether Keegan's information questions college or life-long goals, her depth of knowledge reveals how Show More The Student Fear Factor Essay

  16. The opposite of loneliness : essays and stories

    The opposite of loneliness : essays and stories by Keegan, Marina, 1989-2012, author. ... "The Opposite of Loneliness," went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. Even though she was just twenty-two years old when she died, Marina left behind a rich, deeply expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, capture the hope ...

  17. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories|Paperback

    Marina Keegan wrote the essay "The Opposite of Loneliness" specifically for her Yale graduation in 2012, and the single line "The hats" refers to the college's Class Day tradition of seniors wearing creative, colorful hats. Yet many readers have found its message to be universal, evoking their own days at college, at camp, or in any ...

  18. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

    Marina Evelyn Keegan (October 25, 1989 - May 26, 2012) was an American author, playwright, and journalist. She is best known for her essay "The Opposite of Loneliness," which went viral and was viewed over 1.4 million times in ninety-eight different countries after her death in a car crash just five days after she graduated magna cum laude ...

  19. Read the Title Essay

    I plan on having parties when I'm 30. I plan on having fun when I'm old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd "should haves…" "if I'd…" "wish I'd…" Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We're our own hardest critics and it's easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating.

  20. "Opposite of Loneliness" by Marina Keegan

    "Opposite of Loneliness" by Marina Keegan Yale 22-Year-Old Writes Essay on Life, Then Dies By ABC News May 30, 2012, 9:27 AM May 30, 2012 -- The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the Yale Daily News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday.

  21. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

    Amazon.com: The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories: 9781494531256: Keegan, Marina, Zeller, Emily Woo: Books. Skip to main content.us. Delivering to Lebanon 66952 Choose location for most accurate options Books ...

  22. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories Kindle Edition

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