The Opposite of Loneliness is a collection of autobiographical essays by Marina Keegan, published posthumously in 2014. At the heart of the collection is the essay of the same name, which Keegan wrote for her commencement program at Yale in 2012. Keegan died in a car accident several days after commencement. Yale published The Opposite of Loneliness as a memorial to her, and it quickly went viral, becoming known for its sentiment of indefatigable optimism about the power of self-renewal in creating transcendent value for humankind. Keegan begins the book’s eponymous essay by stating that no word exists for the “opposite of loneliness.” Nevertheless, she explains that her deepest aspiration is to achieve such a state. Looking forward to the near future, she expresses trepidation at her departure from college, knowing that all the connections she has formed over the past four years are impossible not to take for granted and that most of them will fade when their shared ecosystem – Yale University – is taken away from her. Keegan describes the sense of community she stands to lose as ineffable, explainable only in the frustratingly general terms of an automatic, comforting solidarity with a large group of people living under the same conditions and with the same uncertainties. She likens this community to a “team,” recalling fragments of moments in which this sportsmanship subtly manifested for her –  for example, lingering at a restaurant with friends after finishing a meal. Here, she drives home the inexpressibility of these moments using the anaphora “that” – “that night,” “that time.” Keegan admits that the forms of solidarity her college peers have experienced have been intrinsically artificial and limited, consisting in “tiny circles we pull around ourselves” that instill a sense of comfort and well-being. These connections persist and support her even when other aspects of life are not going ideally – with fatigue, for example, or a lack of a life partner. She emphasizes that these webs of connection must vanish in the coming year, both in the physical and digital worlds, as her classmates live under new conditions and strive to form new webs. She ranks this feeling of imminent loss as more frightening than other doubts about her future, including finding a partner and career. Keegan notes a silver lining in the quandary of leaving the college life. The years of warmth and connection that her audience has just passed through are not destined for the rubbish heap of history, but are rather indelible parts of their memories and personalities. In the way that personalities are enduring patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, the positive connections that people gain pave the way for similar positive connections, regardless of environment. She rejects, therefore, the old adage that the best years of one’s life are behind him or her. Further, she rejects the tendency to be insecure in one’s past failures, arguing that they are only perceived as negative when one is fixated on some unattainable ideal of the future self. Keegan reminds her audience, several times, that they have a huge expanse of time and opportunity ahead of them. She renounces the feeling of regret that comes with any achievement in our competitive world, qualifying the positive things we accomplished with imaginations of what could have otherwise been possible. She frames the concept of a “commencement,” like the very ceremony she writes for, as a destructive illusion that empowers feelings of loss and disappointment. Though she acknowledges that some people already seem to know exactly what they want to do in life, she argues that most are still floundering in a sea of knowledge, afraid about which tracks are best to pick up. She consoles this group of people, asserting that it is possible to start a new beginning at any point in life. Moreover, she asserts that the sense of possibility, or “potential energy,” that accompanies the open mind is essential to maintaining it. Keegan wraps up her essay with a memory from freshman year. After misinterpreting a phone invitation from her friends, she walked to the wrong location, ending up inside an empty building on the outskirts of Yale. When the revelation hit her, she was overcome with another feeling: the feeling of safety inside the huge, wooden building. She lingered there, avoiding the snowstorm, and it became clear in her imagination that thousands of people had passed through it before her, and had gone on to other ends. To her commencement audience, she ascribes the same feeling. Though it is a frightening multiplicity of emotions to hold at once, she stands up for its value, exhorting her audience to change the world. An emotionally wide-ranging work, The Opposite of Loneliness and Keegan’s related essays explicate the difficulty and opportunity of being human. Giving love and attention to each of her topics, Keegan makes a case for living out the human life as fully as possible, validating the emotions and anxieties that both encode and inform our experiences.

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Marina Keegan

Adult

Essay Collection

Nonfiction

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