After I finished Marina Keegan’s book, The Opposite of Loneliness, I felt a strong urge to write something about it, then go tell my friends how much they mean to me. I wanted to set down exactly what I liked about her work as its own entity and how her writing made me look inward and inspired me. I wanted to go hug my friends because life can go horribly wrong in an instant and you don’t know how much time you have to tell people you love them and that you feel whatever the opposite of loneliness is when you’re with them.
To begin, the stories and essays in the book are all a delight. Marina had a voice that didn’t try to hide its youth, but was still confident and able to display deep emotion. She had a few stories written from an early twenty something’s point of view, but also one about a man in Baghdad’s Green Zone soon after the Iraq war started and one about people trapped in a submarine, two perspectives she didn’t have any personal experience with.
Marina also conveyed deep empathy for those outside herself in the nonfiction pieces. From caring about whales to trying to understand why many Yale graduates go into consulting or finance she displays a curiosity about the world that makes her work fun to read. My favorite nonfiction piece didn’t feature a single acknowledgment that she was the one writing it. Marina focused completely on a man whose job is an insect exterminator, showing the beauty and sorrows of his life.
When my dad gave me The Opposite of Loneliness for Christmas I was a little apprehensive about it. Was it a veiled hint that “This is what you should be aspiring to / the level you should already be at?” Or rather, should I be comparing what I’ve done to what Marina Keegan did by twenty-two? The answer to both is no, but that’s not a straightforward no.
She was, after all, a prodigiously talented writer (and person in general) who had drive in spades and the ability to follow through with her passions. I tend to be a mix of defensiveness and anxiety when I think or talk about my goals for myself. I think this mindset comes from the fact that for a long time I was simply very good at school but when I was ambitious about something, I tended to lose the drive to keep pushing myself towards the end goal.
So did Marina Keegan have something I just don’t? Probably yes in the talent department, but that’s not really the problem. Marina was serious about setting aside time to work on her writing, and always believed there was something more to be done, some way to better what she’d written. She also got help from people and sought out places where she would be pushed to be the best.
Even if I never produce anything as impactful as her book, I can emulate her actions and writing process which will help me become the best writer I can be, and not the writer she was. Most people don’t accomplish half of what she did in her few short decades anyways, so it’s not productive to try and be someone you’re not.
I wrote in the beginning of this essay that after reading The Opposite of Loneliness I wanted to go out and hug my friends. The reason for this is that days after her college graduation, Marina was killed in a car accident. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that someone so alive and vibrant could be taken from the world in one instant. Anything can happen to anyone. And when you’ve found, like Marina did, whatever the opposite of loneliness is with the people around you, you want to treasure and cherish those relationships.
I’m glad this book exists, though I’m sad it came about the way it did. I’m glad Marina existed, though I have no personal connection to her. The main thing I took away from reading the book is that it’s so important to live life to the fullest and to go after your passions with everything you’ve got. That last sentence sounds incredibly trite, I do realize, so do yourself a favor and discover it for yourself by reading The Opposite of Loneliness.