Diana Guyton

In celebration of the last Sunday before classes for the semester, we bring you the first of two Senior Wisdoms for the day from Diana Guyton on breathing, forgetting, and cheaper Pad Thai.

Name, Hometown, School, Major: Diana Guyton, Atlanta, Columbia College, Creative Writing and Hispanic Studies

Claim to fame: For whatever it’s worth: WKCR blues programmer, co-producer/co-host of the resurrected This Columbia Life, late-to-the-party Double Discovery Center tutor. Former Quarto & 4×4 editor, former Student Global AIDS Campaign member, former Orchesis dancer. Frequent fixture in the Hungarian Pastry Shop and Avery Library (I know, I know). Self-appointed hypegirl for my super-talented friends. You may have seen me in a dance class, in the IRC, or in the audience of way too many campus theater productions.

Also, if you’re the bros in Woodbridge 2E, I’m the girl singing sad songs on the other side of the wall. Thank you for never filing a complaint. Our year of mutual noise tolerance has meant more than you’ll know.

Where are you going? Home to regroup. Then, with any luck, back to New York before long. But I might decide to be an ex-pat instead. Stay tuned.

Three things I learned at Columbia:

1. To return to the breath. On this campus and in this city, there are a million commitments you could make, criticisms (external and internal) that could inhibit you, people you could attempt to become, failures that could deflate you, and experiences that could open you to beauty in ways you never expected. How do any of us cope with all of that? How do you locate yourself inside that chaos? I forget this lesson all the time, but I’m telling you now: return to the breath. This is the most important thing I’ve learned in my limited exposure to yoga (shout-out to the P.E. requirement). Steady yourself, love. Remember what you need and what propels you forward. You know how people say, “This is giving me so much life”? It’s disappointingly simple, I know, but: you give you life. Oxygen gives you life. Come back to the breath.

It’s entirely possible, if not entirely likely, that you’ll spend these 4+ years examining and reexamining your identity, skills, ambitions, loves, and priorities. Maybe you’ll come out on the other side feeling unmoored, as though most of the ideas you had about yourself, the ones that anchored you, have vanished. Maybe that will scare you. Maybe that will make you believe you have no purpose or direction or drive. If that’s the case, I hear you and I empathize. Return to the breath. Meet your fundamental needs. Meet yourself where you are. Meet yourself wherever you are most vulnerable and in need of care. And then breathe life into yourself.

2. To love actively and forgive honestly. I don’t think I truly learned to love anyone—friend, family, or otherwise—before I came to Columbia. I stayed too far back from everybody. I didn’t know what it meant to have my trust challenged or betrayed, to get hurt, to hurt someone unintentionally, or to fail someone I cared about. What it meant to need company in a crisis or to be there for a friend in their crisis. To do the work of rebuilding a friendship that almost broke and fell away. To go through all of that and still choose to love and forgive and love some more.While it’s necessary to tell the people you love that you love them, it’s more necessary to show them. Be there. Listen actively. I cannot emphasize this enough: listen. People will open themselves to you in life-changing ways if you create a space where they feel safe. If things go awry, as they often do, I urge you to forgive the people who matter, including yourself. It may not be easy, and it may take time, but it will help you heal. Everyone’s always calling Columbia cold and competitive and New York impersonal. I challenge you to be the exceptions. This emotional labor has made all the difference in my life.

3. We never get over anything. It all works its way into our fabric. There’s a bit of graffiti on the Hungarian Pastry Shop bathroom wall (the catalog of all wisdom) that reads: “No feeling is final.” That graffiti and the associated aphorisms—“Time heals all wounds” & “This too shall pass”—are true. But what we endure shapes us. Take an all-too-personal example: I thought my depression and anxiety were problems therapy could fix, illnesses I could heal. They’re not. Sometimes they surge and sometimes they recede, but they’re always there. The tasks are survival and growth. Lupita Nyong’o recently directed attention to a quote from Khalil Gibran: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” That said, this goes for happiness, too. I’m always going to love the people I have loved, in some fashion or another. My lungs will always remember how wide they’ve stretched with laughter. Embrace your sorrows and your joys, because you carry them with you and they make you who you are.

Back in my day…

• Cabs came in one color.
• The kiosk-less Lerner Package Center was the least efficient institution known to humankind.
• All the deans were different.
• Campo still existed. I never went. Blah blah blah.
• Pad Thai at Thai Market cost $9.50, and a subway swipe was $2.25.
• Oh, and I didn’t identify as a feminist. That’s changed.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: “Is is.”

Most memorable note from the field: 04/25/2014, at the Word. open mic, some dear friends shared their art with a room full of good people. Moved, I asked these good people to collaborate with me on a song I’d half-written. We jammed at length. Harmonies, at least one rap verse, and a saxophone emerged. Never have playing my guitar and singing felt so empowering/magical. Thanks, y’all.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? Because there is no Mellow Mushroom pizza without cheese, there is no Diana Guyton without cheese.

One thing to do before graduating:

In the spirit of Austin Kleon, I would like to remind you that all advice is autobiographical. And in the spirit of my weird sense of humor, I encourage you to take my advice with a pillar of salt whenever you see fit.

• Accept that you don’t have to know right now. (Hi, Alicia.) This goes for everything from your choice of major(s) to your plans for the future to the question of whether or not you’ll ever be capable of real, romantic love. Figuring out What You Want (or, in the words of a priest who taught me in high school, What You Want Your Life To Say) is a slippery, exhausting, potentially impossible task. Particularly at ~20 years of age, or so we’re told. But I think you know yourself better than you admit. And when it comes to questions like What do you love? and When are you happiest? you probably have some answers already. Give yourself the room to be real with yourself and trust that things will ultimately change for the better. We’re on our way.
• Ask for what you need. If you need more time, ask. If you need space, ask. If you need to talk, ask. When you need honesty and you’re not getting it, ask. No one is a mind-reader. Learn to speak your truth. Allow others to support you when necessary.
• Seek out the people who inspire and challenge you: the artists who create what you dream of creating, the professors whose work flabbergasts you, the friends whose politics always seem five steps ahead of yours (especially when they’re patient and level-headed), the free spirits who recognize how cool you are and will be, you introvert, you. Mentors are everywhere, and they may even find you inspirational in return.
• If you belong to a faith when you begin college, brace yourself for what may be a great and terrible ride. Whether you participate in a religious community on campus or choose to distance yourself from it (or both at different times), I have a feeling your relationship with your faith will evolve during this time. Maybe it will develop in a way that brings you peace. Maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll still have unresolved questions and insecurities and misgivings by the time you write your senior wisdom. Maybe you won’t. Maybe some of your friends will understand why you cry every time you try to talk about religion, and others will have no idea what to say. Hang in there. As someone once told me: “You are holy and becoming.”
• You deserve to feel you’re doing valuable work and growing as a person and are as continually, emotionally stable as possible. If you believe something on campus has compromised your health, don’t be afraid to stray from the rigorous path you laid out for yourself. Give yourself the time and space you need to heal. Everyone who loves you will support you, especially when it’s clear that you’ve thought things out and done what you believe is best. I never took time off, but there are plenty of people here who did and who can talk to you about it. Reach out.
• Understand that none of us is right about everything all the time, and that in some instances beliefs we hold and comments we make can cause harm to others. Practice openness and respect and humility. Speak out against injustice you witness. Two-way street.
• “Take the balloon.”And listen to Sugar in general. She has much more wisdom than I do.
• If you can find a way to afford it and you have the desire, travel now, widely and deeply. Form bonds. Learn new slang. Get your hands dirty. Let it change you.
• Spend a summer in the city before you decide how you feel about New York. Life is vastly different when you’re not on student-duty 24/7.
• Honor your struggle.
• Say thank you.
• Read Kyla’s senior wisdom.
• Get as much sleep and sun as possible.
• Dance it out.

Any regrets?

Of course—remember when I said we never get over anything? Late assignments. Never applying to live in the IRC. Not doing FemSex. That time I was so sleep-deprived that I forgot my dad’s birthday. Other regrets I’ve repressed, you know. But the road stretches forward.