Put on your purple pants!

Hey! I have a suggestion. Let’s all do something fun. Right now. Stop reading this, just for a second, and also stop anything else you may be doing while reading this (g-pod, i-mail, facespace, mybook, or whatever) and walk up to the person nearest to you and compliment them. Nobody near you? Call a friend you haven’t seen in a while to take them on an adventure, right now. Or go on an adventure by yourself! Get a funny hat and go pretend to be a guard in front of Butler and open the door for everyone who comes in or out. Go bake a cake and leave it anonymously outside the door of a floormate you don’t know very well. Or maybe just stop whatever assortment of activities you may be doing simultaneously long enough to just smile at a stranger.

Still reading this? Still also doing your homework and worrying about how your grade in sociology will affect your overall GPA (and hence your overall chances of getting into the graduate school of your choice)? I’m flattered that you can’t tear your eyes away, but maybe I haven’t gotten my point across. I am inviting you—nay, I am imploring you—to join me in an activity I like to call “putting on your purple pants,” or, in terms that make sense, “loosening up.”

Now, I’ve only been at Columbia for a few months, so I’m still bug-eyed when I stare across College Walk at that building with a dome and columns that claims to be a library. I still sometimes lock myself out of my room, and I still ask my teacher if it would be alright if I left the room just for a moment to use the restroom. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve still got a lot to get used to here, like how there are no hall passes or bathroom sign-out sheets in college. And, I’ve still got a whole bunch to pick up on, like how there is no curfew in college. But even with my slowly fading naïveté, and even with all of my bad jokes about hall passes and sign-out sheets, one thing I’m pretty certain about is that we, as a community, could benefit from a little more spontaneity. I think we could do with a little less stress and a little more smiling, especially as the frigid shadow of fall semester finals begins to creep ever closer.

This past weekend, after going home for my family’s annual Thanksgiving dinner (followed by our annual across-the-table arguments), I decided to take a bus back to New York with a friend from home who has recently been living and working downtown. She showed up at my door with her luggage, a shopping bag, and really, really, really purple pants. She told me that she’d been forced out of bed at four in the morning this past Friday by her friends to go shopping, and had decided to buy these purple pants and wear them around no matter what kind of looks her brother, friends, strangers, or I gave her, because they were fun and made people smile (or at least do a double-take as they passed by). Granted, this is not quite the kind of bold move made by, say, William Wallace in that Mel Gibson movie, nor was it even as bold as simply not wearing pants. And yet, it had made an impression on me.

I think we all need to take our own pairs of really, really, really purple pants out of the closet every now and then and strut around in them for a while. Just for fun. Just to smile. Just so others smile. Just to do something spontaneous. Just to remind ourselves that there are more important things in life than driving relentlessly forward through schoolwork and complaining about that chemistry midterm or the teacher who won’t give anything higher than an A-/B+. There are things like smiling and laughing and playing that are equally as important as making sure you breathe at least once in a while and get your essay in on time.

So, put on your pair of purple pants, Columbia. Smile, for the sake of smiling. Do something really nice for someone you really don’t know. Whistle while you (home)work. Be spontaneous, be bold, and, most importantly, enjoy yourself. 
 
The author is a Columbia College first-year.