Last Sunday, I had occasion to return to campus from Cincinnati, jewel of the Ohio River. On the way back, I stopped by my house, just a stones throw from I-75 once it winds its way into Michigan.
Not all moments are made equal. The hurried, hunger-sating moments of pizza inhalation directly following my arrival at home - those are one thing. The moment I saw a new picture on the wall, a photo of my early childhood home - thats something else entirely. Some moments - like the latter - seem more significant: There can be a universe in an instant. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How much can happen in a moment?
At that particular moment, I had a sudden, staggering sense of unity, of simply being at a point on the larger pattern of my life. In what can be an elusive experience when youre changing your major every six weeks and not getting much sleep, I felt very much like me. It was neat - about a nanosecond long, but neat. Thats homecoming.
Clearly, Im not talking about parades and football games, here. Ive got a new definition for homecoming and I think it is more generally useful than the normal one with the marching band and the queen and all that.
So, heres my definition: A homecoming is a moment when you stop to think about who you are, who you used to be and who you ought to become.
It is a moment, just a moment, when you can find your center, let your inner compass align itself to lifes magnetic north and make sure youre facing the right direction. At homecoming, everything is clear. You realize that the class you hate doesnt really matter, that youve got to make time for the things you love and that so much depends on the crappy handmade birthday card you got from your friends this year. Gap khakis and grade-point averages mean nothing at homecoming. Letters from friends and old lullabies mean everything.
It cannot be more than a moment - you cant live that way, after all, always evaluating and second-guessing, always wondering if youre doing the right thing. But for that moment, that blink, or breath or fleeting glance, you can stop and look around and see where you really are and why youre there.
This sounds like a lot to pack into a moment, but its not like you sit down and make a list. Theres no 1040-H form to fill out and process. Homecoming is, I think, very different from our usual way of thinking. It is a chance to glimpse the kernel of a life - the thesis of a human essay - in a purely intuitive way. Albert Einstein said, The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the level of thinking that created the problems. I used to think that meant you have to think in more complex and subtle ways - to go higher, in other words - to solve problems. But maybe thats not the case. Maybe you can, instead, go simple, or deeper. Maybe thats what happens during a homecoming. You dive through all the boring stuff, the stress and uncertainty and those impulses to make lists to the core of whats important.
OK, maybe all of that sounds really weird. Maybe you cant understand what a homecoming moment is unless youve had one, or maybe you cant have one until you understand what it is. Either way, be aware. They strike unexpectedly and are quickly gone.
MSUs Homecoming doesnt come so unexpectedly, being on the calendar. It is also an entire weekend, not a moment. All that taken into consideration, I think it can still have much of the same value as a personal homecoming. For a university, a homecoming should be two things. First, it should be an evaluation of where we, collectively, are. Though there are many things that bring alumni back, I think one of them is the simple desire to see how MSU is doing - to see what has changed and what hasnt. How are things at our alma mater? they ask and then usually follow up with, Cool, lets celebrate.
Second, homecoming should be a reckoning of course. We must take measure of the moment and figure out where were going. This time around, there are many vectors - ah, calc three memories - to consider: the near-exponential growth of the study abroad program, a recent spate of student publications on campus, the thoughtful retooling of Residence Life, a burgeoning activist community and a new emphasis on the understanding of science, for starters.
The sum of those vectors is our direction as an entire university - thats difficult to calculate, but worth doing. My back-of-the-napkin estimate: MSU is pulling into the passing lane of the institutional interstate and is about to put the pedal to metal. As long as we keep our gas tank full - increase faculty salaries - come on, stay with the analogy, here - were in for a wild ride in the years ahead. But wheres that ride going to take us? Where should it take us?
I often glance from the skeleton of the soon-to-be Biomedical and Physical Sciences Center to the trees in the center of the roundabout at Bogue Street and Shaw Lane, which blow in the wind as the life of the university whips around them. Sometimes, when I do, I have a sort of homecoming moment for MSU. I get a strong sense of age and potential. I get the feeling of simply being at a point on the larger pattern of the universitys life. What the thesis of that life is, I cant say exactly, but Im pretty sure it has something to do with the applications of science in society, the powerful idea of community and trees blowing in the wind. That part about trees is really important.
If you participate in the parade today and the revelry and the fireworks afterward, see if you can wrangle a real homecoming out of the deal. As you stand under the lights on the IM Sports-East field, jostling with thousands of other Spartans, ask yourself: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How much can happen in a moment?
Robin Sloan is a State News undergraduate columnist whose column appears every other Friday. He can be reached at sloanro1@msu.edu.