I have always craved to be somewhere else. I wanted to be able to point to a map, place a finger on a country across an ocean and proclaim that I knew the locations of the finest cafes. When I was accepted into a study abroad program at Oxford University for this past Fall term, I was ecstatic. I would be studying political philosophy and British novels and poetry. Oxford brims with history, academia, and tradition. I would spend my time reading seamless literature and drinking strong coffee.
As I was adjusting to living in Oxford, it was impossible to overlook the city’s age. When I first arrived, my living here almost felt wrong, unimportant. Being in Oxford, of course, is a privilege - I was granted the experience because I was a college student with access to an academic scholarship. I struggled to allow myself to indulge in what I craved. I would chastise myself for sipping on boba while wandering past places where such great minds composed the literary canon. But I think I’ve come to realise that experiencing beauty is not dependent on inhabiting a particular location or financial status. The experience of beauty is perhaps even more achievable by making the active choice to recognize it in everyday life. And maybe the greatest merit of beauty is that it is boundless. The invitation is there, even now. Tradition and academia were the foundations of the city. Each dreaming spire had been erected for the purpose of maintaining these facets. My own life felt flippant against such successes and splendor. Of course, I gave myself up to education - allowed it to wash over each aspect of my being. I assumed that my educational experiences would be seamless and triumphant- the locus of my existence. Yet in Oxford, my caliber of knowledge or passion felt inadequate. I felt as though I could not live in a way which gave proper praise to or gratified the tradition enough.
The more I worked to match the pulse of the city I came to realize the value in fusing the old with the new. I took care to closely read Wordsworth and Tennyson, then to minutely observe the woman carrying bundles of Eucalyptus across the road. I began a deliberate practice of getting lost on my way home from the library each day - to depart from the known and defined before returning to my usual path. Soon the boundaries of familiarity were stretched to include what I once considered unknowable. I indulged in social contract theory and then moved onto watching street performers scattered along Queen Street. I worked on reading about the past while truly embracing the present. By reframing the manner through which I measured value in myself and my surroundings, the beauty of the city and its purpose expanded.
Throughout the origin of my engagement with the Oxford tutorial system, I struggled to begin writing. I would choose a topic, write a few sentences, then delete all traces of my thoughts. It was terrifying and intimidating to read as much as I could in a week by that particular author, then attempt to create a coherent summation of what I learned in that week, to then read out loud to an expert in that very topic, who teaches at such an esteemed university. Eventually I wrote my first essay, but it was nowhere near my best work. I was holding back, unsure how to trace my thoughts. I began to feel as though I had overestimated my own abilities in studying here for the term, that my words did not deserve to be read, or even written.
When I first arrived in Oxford, I purely believed that I would be studying these canonized works of literature. I would be merely composing my responses to the works, then stuffing them into my backpack. I had always been told that the purpose of reading was to have a conversation with the author. Most of the time it felt like I was merely listening to what they had to say. My voice was either irrelevant or nonexistent. Through the encouragement of my literature tutor, I began to realize that passion was the spark to any aspect of life. If my writing was superbly structured, but lacked in passion, then it was of limited value.
During Second Week I was sitting in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library reading Keats, who was only 23 when he wrote his most famous works. His youth did not prevent him from penning words suffused with imagery, emotion, and wisdom; but rather strengthened them. Reading Keats’ work made me realize what it meant to create in a world which was uneager to include your words. Just as Keats never quieted his passions, so I must find my own existence deliberate and necessary in the unfolding of life’s narrative. The further I considered Keats and myself, I began to realize that I needed to claim my thoughts, knowing they are unfinished and not as well-informed as an Oxford scholar’s might be. I just needed to write.
In Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty, a poet named Claire calls for passion above all else: “this, Claire argued, is when we become truly human, fully ourselves, beautiful. To swim when your body is made for swimming. To kneel when you feel humble. To drink water when you are thirsty. Or – if one wishes to be grand about it – to write the poem that is exactly the fitting receptacle of the feeling or thought that you hoped to convey.” Uncovering beauty is personal and sacred. It defines the locus of one’s life. When Mozart died 228 years ago, he left behind his unfinished Requiem in D Minor. In fantastic detail Smith describes what it feels like to approach a performance of this piece. This description can serve as a manner of understanding the pursuit of beauty. Describing the rhythmic torso and toes, every ligament and sinew until a corporeal body has been fashioned through the composition. To form a complete being - a complete life, one must engage in more than the historical or the academic. Through reading Smith’s novel, I began to uncover what I had overlooked about myself, and Oxford. Throughout the novel, there exists a duality between the academic and “real world” experiences. We must forge a life which embraces both sides as catalysts for beauty.
In Oxford I discovered that the ultimate pursuit in life was not academia or tradition, but beauty. People often assume that reaching the fullest clarity about beauty, nestling into the warmth of its interior, translates to attaining infinite euphoria or bliss. But that is simply not so. Like Mozart’s Requiem, beauty leads us through a masterpiece - a life. In pursuit of beauty that is chaotic and messy and glorious, we must celebrate its embrace of both despair and triumph. Embracing beauty does not translate to attaining a sense of nirvana about life. We must unapologetically seek beauty that is art, that is poetry, that is music, that is anything that exhales existence. Our passions flourish through our ability to embrace beauty in whatever manner it chooses to present itself to us.
In Oxford I discovered my own understanding of life’s purpose somewhere between thumbing through the pages of a book and walking home past an accordion player dressed in green. Beauty is a collision of these realms. I have learned that tradition and history are to be respected and sought, but also should not be entirely feared or shadowed. I can also find bliss in modernity. I am the bridge between the old and the new - tradition and experiment.
Places such as Oxford should not be solely reserved as a history exhibit to these checkpoints of the past. I was once incredibly intimidated by Oxford. Now I value its ability to invite everyone into its narrative. Studying the humanities in post-modern times reveals the actualization of the great works of literature that I have been reading. Each of the author's voices comes to life and it feels like a commiseration over tea. And as the reader I am the bridge between the old and the new. This is the value of such a place as Oxford. Conversations between the old and new create a respect for tradition while also recognizing that it should not be feared or overly revered. I am learning how to take up forms of tradition while also forging my own path. Oxford is weaving itself into my headspace.
Olivia Bardo is an English and Politics student at Messiah College. She has contributed to The Peregrine Review and won The Academy of American Poets’ Carrie A. Guhl Poetry Prize. She is currently studying abroad at Oxford University.
