This past weekend, one of my fraternity brothers from my alma mater inexplicably drove home from a party drunk instead of waiting for the designated driver that was on his way. On the way he crashed into two cars stopped at a traffic light, injuring a young woman and man, both also students of my alma mater. The young woman went to the hospital and was released the same day. The young man, a brother in another fraternity, survived a surgery he wasn't supposed to, but had limited brain activity. He eventually had to be put on life support and was essentially brain dead. His parents took him off life support yesterday. My brother escaped the accident with few bodily injuries, but is currently awaiting trial and is suffering injuries of another sort. Below are my thoughts and feelings on the matter, a therapeutic release for my own sake.
"We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing each other." – Luciano de Crescenzo
I enjoy this quote. We are described as angels, implying the hand of God. But if God had a hand in our creation, why didn’t He give us two wings, so we could fly on our own? Why didn’t He make us perfect? We are imperfect creatures. We are capable of so much evil, of so much selfishness, of causing so much pain. My alma mater recently experienced a jarring reminder of our imperfection on an idle Friday night.
We have lost two angels. One ignored the one-winged angels around him and has had his wing clipped, for years to come, if not longer. Now he’ll have to rely on the kindness and forgiveness of others, but it will take time. The other angel has flown to a better place, complete and perfect at last, with two wings.
Imperfect as we are, the beauty of the quote above is evident in the aftermath of this tragedy. Much as self-reliance is exalted, it can lead to a very lonely life. Moreover, some of the greatest joys in life are impossible to achieve on your own. You can’t love on your own. There's no such thing as a family of one. You can’t move humanity forward on your own, achieving such great feats as the end of slavery, the defeat of fascism, and the landing on the moon. These were all achievements that required a greatness of spirit in a vast number of people to succeed, and they were made all the sweeter because it wasn’t easy, because we had to embrace each other to fly. The imperfection that God bestowed upon us forces us to lean on one another, to develop compassion and love.
I have experienced the excitement, satisfaction, and comfort of achieving something greater than myself with my fellow one-winged angels, through my fraternity, an experience that the angels we lost also had. Brothers rise - and fall - with each other. Some people deride fraternities by saying we pay for our friends, but this just isn’t the case. Most of the money we pay goes to insurance policies. In other words, we pay to protect our friends. However, we’ve been reminded that money only goes so far, that no amount of money can protect us and our loved ones from ourselves, or the actions of others. The people you surround yourself with are your best safety net. And when tragedies occur – as they inevitably do, despite our best efforts – the only comfort will be found in those same people.
As the fraternities, the wider Greek community, and my alma mater as a whole cope with the flood of emotions overcoming them – the anger, the guilt, the sadness – we must remember to lean on each other, all of us, no matter our feelings or associations. After all, two angels with the same wing will only fly in circles; we must reach out to everybody and accept any hands offered if we’re going to rise above. So in the weeks ahead, as we all go our separate ways for the holidays, grab the one-winged angels that mean the most to you, embrace them...and take flight.