The Magic of Harvard University
…a guest post by Buford Lister
Hello, my name is Buford Lister. I am honored to be writing for you today. As you may already know, I am the creation of an unknown author. Ryan-Tyler N. Mason? That guy doesn’t exist; he is merely a figment of an aging, yet still overactive, imagination. The real author has buried himself so deep I doubt he even knows who he is.
My task is to tell you about some of my experiences at Harvard University. That guy (the so-called creator) has written a lot about what happened to me way back when I was a Ph.D. student there. Just so you know, I still get upset whenever someone mentions The Lister Affair or asks me to sign the book that was written about it. I am not going to address that mess. You can look elsewhere if you really need to learn more about that time in my life.
I want to take this opportunity to tell you what a special place Harvard is, what an extraordinary place it is. I want to tell you about some of the people whose ghosts roam that campus. I want you to know what an honor it is to have spent time there.
Was I the smartest person at Harvard all those years ago? Of course, I was. Pay attention to that one word, I said person. That implies I am talking about human beings. I am certain I am a human being, I know a lot about my backstory, the problem for me is that I am sure that many of the people I came in contact with were not strictly human. They were something else. What? I am unsure, but I am certain their DNA was not the same as yours or mine. Their strands were put together with something different in mind.
One thing I have been thinking a lot about lately is the responsibility alumni of the greatest university in the world have to humanity. When I was there, it was made clear to me that I was supposed to use my ability to make the world a better place. After leaving, I was to go out in public and make a mark, one only I could make. Those damn mathematical types would always hound me, constantly asking me what equation was going to adorn my tombstone. The implication was clear, if there were no symbols on my grave marker, then my life was a failure. And that takes me directly to the obituary.
People often talked about the first line of their upcoming obituary. The other thing they talked about, obituary wise, was if my life, and by implication, theirs, would be worthy of space in The New York Times. The stakes were very high; immortality was the prize. After all, it was right there for most of us; all we had to do was work harder than everyone else and reach out and grab it. Whatever you do, do not get distracted by the nonsensical, the irrelevant, or the absurd. There are lots of ghosts of the immortals roaming that campus. And no, that is not a contradiction. Physical death has nothing to do with the kind of immortality I am talking about.
I want everyone to know that I am getting worried about my place in the order of things. The conventional wisdom is that I had my chance. Everything was properly lined up. I simply blew it. I made a terribly stupid, inexplicable mistake. And believe me, I have paid for it. I know what the first line of my obituary will be, and I know it will run in The New York Times. I also know none of those words will reflect positively on me. I have become a joke, a cautionary tale, a total failure.
When a person is exiled from Eden (that is what happens when a person graduates from Harvard), you leave with a responsibility. Go forth, do good. Make important discoveries; live a good life. Please, please, make a contribution. Do not waste what has been given you. This raises a special question, one I have been considering for decades.
Is it the magic of Harvard that instills this responsibility, or do the students go there because they feel it, deep down, at a central place of their being? I guess it comes down to your particular view of human nature. Is Harvard the kind of place that inspires greatness, or at least the idea of exceeding expectations? In my case, I felt it long before I set foot in Cambridge. I felt it, down deep. I expected it. It never occurred to me that I would betray my promise. I am, of course, severely disappointed in myself.
I am old, far beyond the prime of any mathematician (many do their best work in their 20s). I have no chance of making a substantial contribution to that world. No chance. I guess I had my opportunity, OK, I know I did. So, what now? What am I supposed to do now?
I can go ahead and die and live forever as a cosmic joke, a man who didn’t know the difference between 1 and negative 1. I suppose I can give up and resign myself to a life lived as a nondescript failure. Would that appeal to you? I didn’t think so.
The point is that you can count yourself blessed if you do not think about such things. If you can live, do the best you can, and feel satisfied as you are about to die then you are far ahead of the game as it is played among the others. Should you count yourself lucky? Absolutely not. It is far better to have lived as a spectacular failure than to mildly succeed at an average person’s life’s purpose. And yes, I know how sad that is, I know you will feel sorry for someone talking such nonsense. Such is the fate of the overly ambitious.
And this gets us to why I am so upset. He, that man, gave me all this talent and ability, and then he aged me, took away my cleverness, and has left me to stew. I can’t make him write more. I can’t find Athena and make her talk to him, to somehow inspire him to sit at his keyboard. He is either going to write, or he is not. If he doesn’t write something great, if he doesn’t somehow find redemption for me in some profound way, then all my efforts are going to be for nothing. I will fade from history as someone who should be forgotten, as a person, fictional or not, who went out of his way to fail to live up to expectations. I wish I could make all of you understand how this makes me feel. My end doesn’t have to be this way. If only I could conjure up a solution.
Buford Lister
Iroquois County, Ohio