Last week was one of those great times to be a student who gets involved on campus. I spent Tuesday listening to author Sapphire speak at William Oxley Thompson Library. That night, a gal pal and I dined at a gala in the historic Lincoln Theatre that supported the Center for Healthy Families, and we heard the Harmony Project community choir. Wednesday, Wes Moore came to campus as part of the President and Provost Lecture series.
Students were looking forward to John Legend’s visit Sunday, but to many people’s surprise, he shared the Oval with President Barack Obama and 35,000 of his closest Buckeye friends. It was an awesome experience to be on stage with 100 other students and look at that crowd on the Oval.
Sapphire wrote the best-selling novel “Push,” which was then made into an Academy Award-winning film, “Precious.” Moore is a Rhodes Scholar and author of “The Other Wes Moore.” Obama, of course, is the president of the United States. Coming to Ohio State with different backgrounds and purposes, they all had important points for their audiences. However, one event stood out.
Moore gave the best talk. His book is the first that I have read that was completely useful. He talks about how men in the West do not have a uniform rite of passage to adulthood. It is because of this lack of rite of passage, he argues, that there exist so many paths in life that can lead to a man’s destruction.
The premise of his book, based on his own story and that of another man named Wes Moore in his neighborhood, is about two men with the same name and the same basic life set-up. Eventually their paths diverge based on sets of decisions they make and decisions made for them by others. The other Wes Moore finds himself spending his adulthood in prison.
Moore’s talk hit home that life is about consequences of the choices we make and the choices made for us. It reminded me of those childhood choose-your-own-adventure books. Life, and especially college, is a choose-your-own-adventure book. You make a decision at page 50 to turn to page 128 instead of page 17 and you end up in a situation that you did not want to be in.
You can have one event that changes your life — and being an involved student at OSU frequently offers you those opportunities.
My hope for all Buckeyes is not just to leave their marks on campus but also to turn the pages of their own books, leading to better adventures and greater self-awareness. Part of that is being a good citizen (and doing one’s duty to vote, as former Sen. John Glenn quipped Sunday night). Moore reminded me of something else, too: Success in life is a path we help to pave. The path is there, but we have to do the work to make the road.
