The Man in the Arena

Many seniors find that their twisted four-year path leads them to the hallowed halls of our nation's Capitol. Few end up in a park pontificating about the state of the nation while writing a senior column for the Spectator. But it is a Monday afternoon, and as I sit across from the Russell Office Building, my thoughts stray into the abstract.

The gorgeous tree-lined parks and paths that lead out from the Capitol in every direction are picture-perfect. They are the ideal to which we aspire, an ideal in which democracy is simple to explain and share, the Founding Fathers still watch over us, and American might makes right simply because America is always right.

At the same time, the ideal for the building in front of me would hold that the men and women inside were public servants of unquestionable integrity. There would be no Duke Cunninghams or Tom DeLays.

In the park where I sit, minutes have passed, and a familiar sight presently comes into focus-a man, likely homeless, pushing a shopping cart. There, ambling past me, is my anti-ideal. It seems unconscionable that a society can completely abandon an individual, yet we accept such conditions by ignoring the specter of reality or by transferring the burden of responsibility to others.

The park appears perfect at first glance, a green utopia bathed in sun. A body like the Senate, the self-proclaimed "greatest debating body in the world," seems equally perfect if viewed only through the prism of elementary school textbooks and simple history. In both cases, reality intrudes, and the picture darkens.

Four years ago, I entered Columbia an idealist. On Sept. 3, 2002, as a wet-behind-the-ears first-year, I wrote, "We are the vanguard of a new era, and we face the world armed with an amazing array of skills and talents. We are young men and women of diverse backgrounds who have come to the intellectual and cultural hotbed of our nation to improve on what we have already established ... we will spend the next four years learning to think critically about these facts and figures, learning to question and analyze the world around us."

Now fast-forward past four years of a Columbia liberal education. I leave today speaking about conceptualization and subjectivity, my idealism forever altered by the intrusion of unpleasant realities. Yet, in the face of reality, Columbia has at the same time reinforced my belief that no situation we confront is hopeless, simply because Columbians have never been ones to accept reality as immutable.

Even when reality intrudes to shatter our ideal sunlit park into a real, troubled, urban area, the great people and works of our past serve to remind us that ideals exist because people who envision them and imagine a better world also still exist.

Soon I will begin to tread the path upon which I sit. For, despite the homeless men walking along the corridors of power, I still do believe that we can and will do better. In the end, I remain, as I was born, an optimist who wants to be convinced that the people in the halls of Congress are working for the common good and that the man in the park will be taken in, fed, and given the ability to work and own a home. But now, facing a world not of education but of action, there is a new sense of responsibility to confront, a responsibility to get people off the streets, a responsibility to fix crooked politics.

These are the last words of a writer who has never shied from confessing confusion or uncertainty. I sit today in a park, writing about the state of the world, soon to become not a writer, but an actor in the non-academic world. For the last four years, I have critiqued that which has strayed far from my ideal, but come May 17, the ability to critique without having an equal responsibility to act will disappear. The period of learning will become a period of doing.

I have seen the park, both ideal and real. Now it is my turn-our turn-to try to find common ground between the two. For in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena ... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst...fails while daring greatly."

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in political science. He is a former Spectator associate opinion editor.