You know, the graduation gown is far more elegant a thing than I ever noticed before. Perhaps it is just the emotional importance it receives when you yourself are graduating in one, but certainly I liked the way it flowed and billowed a little as people walked across the stage to receive their diploma. Colin Diver made a tasteless torture joke to start the gig off, but he seemed perplexed by Reedies — “I never know when you guys are going to laugh” — and I think he was impressed that the kids now giving him rubber chickens and swigs of imported rum had managed to get through one of the most academically challenging gauntlets known to man. But we did it! All of us, from Humanities to Thesis, shared a most amazing four years, more or less. Thanks to our friends from years ahead or behind or parallel, our families who paid tuition and sent care packages and gave birth to us for heaven’s sake, and a bunch of dedicated and talented professors and faculty members who tended our eager brains.

Sometimes it felt like having a whole support staff just for me… other times it felt like Reed hated my guts. But I would never trade my two years of living with my beloved dorm family; my irrepressible crush and unrelenting romance with my bean, Thomas; my hated apartment (no, living is not more fun in the Wimbledons, no matter what they tell you) and the subsequent flight to Greece; my frustration and joy with veganism and health-consciousness; my forays into the many realms of linguistics and my return with sweet thesis honey. The good, the bad, the pretty. I’ll take it all and do it again in a heartbeat. (Well, okay… maybe two heartbeats. I need a breather.)

The most important thing about the diploma is not the piece of paper, or the prestige, or whatever advantage that might give me in terms of employment opportunities. Ultimately, I don’t think a little piece of paper can ever matter as much as the time spent in pursuit of it: my four years at Reed. Really, I might have happily walked up on stage, shook Diver’s hand, and said “No, thank you.” No diploma for me, thanks. If it weren’t silly to do so, I might have done that and not felt like the last four years of my life were wasted. Remember what Alan Watts said? Life is music, and you’re supposed to dance.

I don’t know how to dance properly, but when I’m not self-conscious about it, I sure have fun!

I want to live someplace warm, where I can grow bananas and avocados and oranges. Someplace I don’t have to shiver, or frown at running because of cold rain. But there is so much here in Portland that begs me to stay! Hawaii has the weather, but the Mainland has friends and family and better opportunities for jobs and explorations. I have a friend I want to start a tea company with, and another friend who wants someone to help with his business, keeping his website up to date and his house clean and welcoming. The unofficial job title is “artisan of space” — and no, that’s not a euphemism for “maid”. It is in fact very near my dream job, and I’d take at the drop of a hat if it weren’t a once-a-month thing. Yet it has the potential to grow, being something akin to an invitation to join the Round Table.

I’ve already decided to spend the summer on the West and East coasts, but perhaps I should stay longer. Perhaps I should live in a co-op, explore recipes, pursue some hobbies until they turn into little business opportunities (food, games, design), and develop the relationships I’m only beginning to form with people like Gavin and Kellyn and others who share my passions and enthusiasm for life. Here, I can form what my dad calls “a community of like-minded people” and what Gavin simply calls “teams”. Here is his Round Table. Here, Thomas can be near the people he cares about, too, and here, I won’t be struggling alone to make ends meet — much less make something of my grand dreams for the future.

But these days are sunny and warm, and my toes feel green grass, and Thom’s mom is in town taking us to the Chinese Gardens, and my thesis is brilliant, and I’m full of hope and excitement. When the cold sets in again next winter, will I be regretting not having gone to Hawaii? Should I spend the summer with my parents, playing with my ideas full-time, instead of in Portland, where I have to pay rent and face reality that much sooner? What if none of my exciting plans ever makes it out the barrel of the gun, due to my own inertia? No, I won’t let that happen. Soon I won’t have school as an excuse not to let my imagination go wild. When I free it, where will it fly? The horizon is so much bigger here, but maybe it’s just where I’m standing. The I-Ching said not to fly west, but for how long? Why does climate have to be so darned important to my mood and well-being? Why do I so wish for my windows to be flung open all the time, for the sea to be warm, for the rain not to chill my bones? It’s so simple a thing, yet it makes decisions difficult.

So I will wait and see. Perhaps my parents’ scouting mission to Hawaii will inspire them to buy land and help me build a house on it. Perhaps all my friends will decide to move there and form an eco-village and grow chocolate. Perhaps all the opportunities here will dry up, and the future will be up for grabs once again. Perhaps the glacial melt will swallow up Hawaii and global warming will turn the Pacific Northwest into citrus country, and solve all my dilemmas once and for all. Perhaps I will get a terminal illness and I’ll use my last days to… um… oh, wait, that’s a tough one, isn’t it.

Like looking at recipes without a proper kitchen, it is difficult to sit down and plan without recourse to experimentation. So I’ll talk with more people, sleep on it, think some more, and figure out the most flexible option. Actually, it’s kind of exciting — I’ve finally hit the last bit of pavement, and it’s off-roading here on out. I just have to stick to my values and my passions, not get too bogged down in seriousness, and I’ll have a grand adventure. (Hopefully with an avocado tree somewhere in there.)

My increasing interest in health and food combined with my severe lack of kitchen gear, it was only natural for me to develop the neurosis of pouring over food blogs, copying recipes from library cookbooks, and day-dreaming about my future vegetable garden. Fortunately the weekly Family Dinners have started up again, which gives me a great excuse to exercise my culinary muscles — thus far a repeat of the cranberry-apple salad, some almond and roasted pepper hummus, for this weekend, rice-flour pizza. I also get to share my enthusiasm for food and health science with Kellyn, who is training to be a naturopath.

Now, before you go knocking holistic nutrition, realize that conventional Western medicine focuses on treating symptoms rather than causes. By treating the body as a mechanical system, medical science looks for pharmaceutical and surgical techniques that fix specific isolated subsystems that have broken down. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, except for the fact that these subsystems are incredibly complex and intricately interconnected. Medical science is lagging far behind in understanding how these systems work, which is why I prefer those studies that look at how lifestyle habits affect overall health rather than how isolated chemicals affect individual cells. For example, only recently has the theory of chronic inflammation taken hold, as the underlying cause of such related chronic diseases as heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes.

Kellyn was frustrated with the treatment she was getting from conventional doctors while her house’s mold was attacking her, and I have also been turned off by Western methods. After struggling to understand the source of my skin problems online, I finally went to a dermatologist — all she did was write a prescription for acne meds, without even looking at me. It turned out she knew less than I did. She was ready to feed me drugs, yet skin problems can be a sign of other issues, like dehydration, a harsh reaction to soap, a food allergy, or even a vitamin D deficiency. This is not to say that science is bad — it is simply to say that our scientific understanding of health and the human body are incomplete. Eastern medical traditions may include many practices that have no foundation in science and may never be shown to be effective, but they start with the right question — “Why are we sick?”

This makes holistic medicine especially good at treating chronic conditions and promoting health to prevent people from getting sick in the first place. In the introduction to Get It Ripe, the author explains the basics of Ayurvedic nutrition: foods have different kinds of energies, like warming/cooling and expanding/contracting. Instead of viewing these as inherent properties of foods or mystical energies (and then dismissing them, if you’re like me), it seems more useful to view them as conceptual tools for understanding the complexities of digestion. Indeed, some foods do make me feel light and energetic, and others make me feel grounded — what’s wrong with developing a high-level theory of how foods and preparation methods contribute to health and well-being?

Another example I’ve run across recently is ChiRunning, a book that adapts Tai Chi principles to running technique. The idea is to develop a good running form, with a posture that allows qi to move unimpeded through the body — this author, too, doesn’t get bogged down with wacky energy explanations, but grounds the theory in physics and biomechanics as much as the more abstract symbolic concepts. For example, if you think about your pelvis as a bowl of qi, you don’t want this bowl to spill when you are standing upright — good posture involves keeping your pelvis level, and this visualization is helpful even if there’s no real physical substance in danger of spilling out. Good running technique reduces injuries by fixing the source of the problem rather than trying to make up for bad technique by building muscle (“power running”) or wearing highly engineered running shoes. In fact, the best running shoes are no shoes at all — barefoot running forces you to run lightly, reducing the impact on your body and consequently the chronic knee problems and shin splints that plague most runners, whose overly-protective footwear allow them to keep running with poor form. Of course, you don’t need to go barefoot to develop good form — ChiRunning itself doesn’t exactly advocate it — but I’m definitely interested in taking the first step, so to speak, by replacing my current sneakers with these foot-glove type things. (I’ve never been a big fan of shoes, myself.)

The reason I’m talking about all this holistic stuff in the first place is that an idea occurred to me while reading Get It Ripe. The author is a “registered holistic nutritionist” — now, I’m pretty much set on moving to Hawaii after graduation, working my way to residency, and then enrolling at the University of Hawaii’s school of architecture — but what am I doing in the meantime? I really want to learn more about nutrition, both the hard science and the more holistic approaches, so why not do a distance learning program and become a registered nutritionist myself? Apparently the jobs can be quite lucrative, but honestly, I just see it as an opportunity to learn more about these current interests of mine and to share that knowledge with others.

I can imagine it now… Dr. Sarah J. Gould, linguist, designer, and nutritionist, at your service! (The doctor part will come from the Doctorate of Architecture degree, though.)