The little things and the joy they bring

A friend of mine asked me to help her with a name-that-movie-quote contest in the newspaper. I… A friend of mine asked me to help her with a name-that-movie-quote contest in the newspaper. I was pitifully only able to identify one: “Aloha, Mr. Hand!” But I knew that another sounded familiar: “What we do in life echoes through eternity.” (Internet Movie Database later refreshed my memory. It was from “Gladiator.”)

Rather deep thoughts for someone spending the next six years or so toiling away in the trenches of academia.

Getting a degree is a noble goal, but that’s looking at the experience from a distance. In the daily grind of trying to keep my soapbox racer of essays and memorized constellations from falling apart, I fear that I may still be able to see the forest for the trees, but I’m far too busy writing a paper about the bark wood to give a damn.

Is this all just a stepping stone to the time when we can use all these accumulated multiple-choice answers to then begin the process of helping the world? I’d like to be able to kill time before Spanish by handing out soup in the Hill District and meeting with the city board on my ideas about how to fix the Port Authority situation — I really would — but I don’t think I’m going to be able to make any office hours then.

It probably seems needlessly self-deprecating to ruminate on how self-absorbed I’ve let my studies become. After all, this is just part of the culture of the American academic scene: self-preservation; every man for himself. Everyone does his part and leaves happy with a couple of letters to affix to his name on business cards.

I just don’t think that in the process of trying to survive, we should neglect that same process in others’ lives. In the end, the future doctors are relying on patients and actors on audiences. We need people to sustain our reason for living. Four years is not an insignificant amount of time. This is the most critical juncture of our growth and the most important in learning from others.

The perfect example of how we students fit into this can be found in the lobby of Sutherland East.

They make random hookups a lot more awkward than needed, but they’re an essential component of what makes the university such a safe one: the security guards. On any given day I encounter up to six different guards on my travels between class and excessive showering. They each perform the same duty and produce the same result. The way they conduct themselves, however, shows just how much of a difference attitude makes. Some are grumpy. Some never look up from the sports page to make sure that really is my grinning mug on the ID I swipe. Some insist on staring down my Nana when she comes to visit just in case she’s actually an Al-Qaida operative.

And then there are those diamonds in the rough who make your day just a little brighter. Like the late shift guard in Sutherland East who lets me slide in without giving her my card when it’s late and my hands are full. Or the one who can always tell if it’s a good weekend or not by the style of my early morning stumble. Or the most famous of them all: the guy who seems to know absolutely every single resident’s name without fail. If you live in SE, you know who I’m talking about. The guy never fails to wish me a good day no matter how many times I’ve gone through the door that day. He’s the one who always compliments my roommate Alan on his sports articles in the paper. I’ve never seen him sit behind the glass with anything but a smile and a kind word.

I worked as a doorman at a wedding center in high school, and I was unable to muster any enthusiasm for anyone who wasn’t giving me a tip after about an hour. I am blown away by the daily decency of the guy and his unflappable ability to make my mood just that iota brighter on my way to a long day of tedious busywork.

It isn’t what he does everyday. It’s how he does it. I might have to do a lot of tedious busywork, but maybe I can try to do it better. Or at least happier. Someone will notice.

Daron Christopher successfully avoided referencing “Pay It Forward” in this column. E-mail kudos to djc14@pitt.edu.