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By Mary Elizabeth Young, Class of 2016
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| Mary Elizabeth Young |
THINKsgiving–it sounds like a pretentious meeting of young college students too big for their britches. I certainly would have thought so. However, on Nov. 7, in a small gathering on the second floor of Ekstrom library, we did not gather to celebrate our own ideas. In this play on the American holiday of thanks, we, the, so-called “pretentious young college students” actually came to celebrate the influential ideas of others.
While enjoying a feast of foods you would expect to find on your grandmother’s Thanksgiving table, between bites of savory turkey and warm pumpkin pie, we shared and discussed others’ ideas that have influenced us throughout the past year: ideas that fascinated us, intrigued us or simply confused us. We shared thoughts, speeches or poems. Some of us shared ideas of “the greats” such as Shakespeare or Plato while others of us shared the words of little known poets. Kevin treated us to a portion of Charlie Chaplin’s speech in “The Dictator,” while Adam read a poem by Lewis Carroll, adopting the voice of each character. And Katie implored us to be “nice to the pizza dude,” as one author had written, while Jeremy pointed to the philosophy found in Taylor Swift’s lyrics.
I chose to share something from my Shakespeare class’s discussion of King Lear. During class, my professor had raised the question: “Why do we enjoy tragedy?” Some in the class decided it is because we enjoy seeing the suffering of others but went no further. Dissatisfied with this answer, and frankly disturbed by this view of human nature, I brought the same question to THINKsgiving where my peers pulled it apart and truly grappled with this Shakespearean theme. Subsequently, I discovered a more optimistic answer as to why humans enjoy tragedies: tragedy allows us to know happiness. Without it, we have no comparison and no way of understanding all that we are blessed with. And, without an understanding of our blessings, how can we be thankful?
THINKsgiving was a true manifestation of “food for thought” for there was food in exchange for sharing interpretations of ideas. While one can certainly be thankful for a Thanksgiving feast, it was amidst the sharing of these diverse ideas that we had conversations about human nature, leadership and humility, and for that I am truly grateful.
Mary Elizabeth Young is a sophomore McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She is studying English, Spanish, and Political Science.