Title: An Alternate Route

My roommates have been begging me to write a column about them. They want me to call them X, Y and Z. I think they imagine that I would spend the whole time talking about how cool they are, but I can’t do that. I don’t want to lie to you. (I shouldn’t have said that. They all get back to the apartment before me on Thursdays, and they’re probably already changing the locks on the door.)

This past weekend, as I tried my best to think of ways to make fun of my dear roommates, I had trouble. I have plenty of funny stories I could tell, but all the stories I came up with were eclipsed by the stark fact that I am incredibly lucky to have all three of them and many others as friends. I value tremendously their friendships because they love me no matter what and because I know they value my relationship to them.

A central tenant of Ayn Rand’s life philosophy kept coming to mind this weekend because it serves as a nice foil to what I value in my relationships. A fundamental aspect of her book “Atlas Shrugged,” as I understand it, is that in interpersonal relationships in the novel, people are evaluated, or deemed worthwhile of interacting with, according to their external accomplishments. I’m quite conceited, I have to confess, so this intrigued me when I first read it. I liked the idea of a society in which everyone was ranked according to how successful they were at their jobs, in which I was asked, encouraged even, to be concerned only with my own performance and not to worry about being my brother’s keeper. (That phrase always makes me think of a zoo, but sometimes we think a zoo would be the perfect habitat for my brother, so it works. Luckily for me he’s 400 miles away and can’t beat me up for saying that.) I liked Rand’s thought that I had it in me to succeed without anyone’s help and that I wasn’t obligated to take care of anyone but me.

I liked the idea, that is, until I started being honest with myself. I fail quite a bit (sometimes as much as once a week), and the relationships I value most in my life, whether with friends or family, are those in which I know that my acceptance and appreciation is not based on some standard of measure. As I heard it put recently, my most secure relationships are those that are not based on performance, where I know there are no conditions on my friends’ and family members’ love.

In Rand’s world, no one helps you when you fall down. You’re supposed to be able to pick yourself up, but not everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps all the time. At least, I certainly can’t, and really, I’ve never been able to. Thank goodness my friends and family value who I am, not what I do: I don’t think I could ever live up to anyone’s standards.

Honestly, I let people down all the time. I stole my little sister’s sunglasses (which was totally worth it because she forgave me eventually and they look really good on me) and forgot to send e-mails I said I would, and I abandoned my roommate X: I left her sitting with her groceries, cell-phoneless, on a bench outside Kroger, and raced off to FedEx papers for my FBI background check (which is another story for another day) and made Y and Z leave the apartment in the middle of dinner to rescue her from the creepy old man in the parking lot.

Rand’s protagonists were perfect, which appealed to me at first, but then it struck me as false. We’re all human, and I, at least, mess up all the time. And twice on Sundays. Who wants to be graded by other people on how well they do at life?

I like having people with whom I can have fun and dance horribly to music in the car but who are also willing to make me brownies when I’m sick and will only laugh a little bit when I say pitifully, “Don’t leave me alooooooonnnneeee…”

I hope you have relationships in your life in which you are loved and valued over and beyond your extrinsic “worth.” I am extraordinarily lucky in that I have somehow been surrounded by friends and family who love me no matter how poorly I dance at the club or sing around the house. (And this is more important in my life than you would guess.)

Fall Break is looming, so see you in two weeks. My plans involve sleeping for four days straight. I hope your break is as enjoyable as I plan on mine being. Have a good one.

— Leigh Dickey is a junior in global studies. She can be reached at [email protected].