Colin Devine, Staff Writer

My mom found the bookmark while she was cleaning my room.  Words can have an amazing effect, and these ones almost knocked her down.  On the bookmark, her 8-year-old son had written the following statement: “I’m thinking magic isn’t real.”  It was quite an emotional challenge for me to write that; I was immersed in the Harry Potter series at the time.  After my repeated attempts to make light issue forth from the stick I was brandishing as a wand, I was forced to accept one devastating conclusion: Magic wasn’t real.  It has taken me 11 years to see that I was wrong.

Whenever I reflect on my first year at Notre Dame, the Rudy theme song immediately begins playing in my head.  It seems odd that when we attempt to draw conclusions from our life experiences, we “reflect” upon them.  Reflection involves the bending of both light and of memories.  I could write this article about how amazing my freshman experience has been, all the friends that I have made, all the wonderful things I have learned, how fun football games are or how much I’ll miss Notre Dame over the summer.  I’m sure most would enjoy reading it and would walk away reassured that everyone at Notre Dame is in fact as happy as they act like they are.  But it would be a lie.

Heresy!  A Notre Dame student who has something negative to say about his experience?  Let me finish.  I have loved my time here, much more than I expected, but I do believe there is at least one problem we all have at Notre Dame, even though very few of us take the time to look in a mirror to see it.

There seem to be three answers to the hastily exchanged “How are you?” questions one hears around campus: “tired,” “busy,” and “good.”  I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone answer that they were having a rough day or week.  This may seem to be an entirely innocuous phenomenon; however, I think it is quite significant.  An outsider might think that everyone is happy all of the time and that anyone who has bad days or experiences any negative emotions is somehow abnormal.  Throughout my life, college was the Promised Land, the place where life would finally make sense.  I was able to dispel any feelings that life wasn’t as it should be by reminding myself that in college it would all work out.  After all, how many of us were told that “Your college years will be the best of your life”?  If that statement is true, and we recognize that college life isn’t perfect, we must accept that life will always have its challenges.

I think many of us at Notre Dame are incredibly reluctant to admit that there are things wrong with us.  Everyone thinks everyone else is leading a flawless life, while no one truly is.  We’ve created a culture where the hard things of life are swept under the rug so we don’t have to deal with them.  A quintessential Notre Dame experience, dorm Mass, exemplifies this phenomenon.  During the prayers of the faithful, students are able to vocalize all the doubts, difficulties and struggles that we are all enduring every day.  Through people’s prayers, we catch glimpses of sick parents, anxious siblings, depressed friends—but only briefly.  Then at the exchange of peace, everyone exchanges an enormous hug with all of their friends.  I often forget that these are the same people who just offered their prayers and revealed their challenges.  Of course, greeting each other with such enthusiasm and joy is a very good thing, but I wonder how many of us have pulled a friend aside after Mass to ask more details about his or her sick grandmother.  I believe that God hears all of our prayers, but that doesn’t change the fact that we all could spend a lot more time listening to each other too.  When Jesus needed his friends most in the Garden of Gethsemane, he returned to them three times in a row to find them asleep.  I hope that when our friends come to us, they don’t find us sleeping.

All of this seems to paint a negative image of friendships at Notre Dame; this is in no way my intent.  In my 8 months here I have met many more caring, generous and loving people than I have met in my entire life.  It is precisely because of the richness of the community that I have such high standards for Notre Dame friendships.  I wish Notre Dame students would realize that all of us have problems much bigger than our course registration time or the weather.  The reality is that we all need each other.

A quotation from GK Chesterton demonstrates my point.  He writes, “Comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel. . . Rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, which through God shall endure forever.”

Re-enter the magic.  One of the things that has always fascinated me about Harry Potter is that even though the characters have magical powers, their lives are just as confusing and difficult as ours. Magic cannot permanently solve any problems. One of the most beautiful passages in the entire series occurs near the end of the last book. Dumbledore tells Harry, “That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend… Of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing.  That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.”  The most powerful magic doesn’t involve spells, potions or flying broomsticks.  Maybe we’ve been looking for magic in all the wrong places. Perhaps the most magical thing we can give a friend is to ask them how they’re doing and truly care about his or her answer.

The most magical thing about being a student at Notre Dame isn’t the sun reflecting off the golden dome or the atmosphere on football weekends.  The most magical part is that for four years, we are all comrades together on our journeys.   Reckers’ milkshakes, long talks in the dining hall, football games, SYR dances, late-night talks about life and all the wonderful things we do with our friends are not interludes in our Notre Dame experience, but rather our brief years at Notre Dame are interludes in our lifetime experience of friendship and joy.  I wish I could change what I wrote on that bookmark 11 years ago because today I definitely believe that magic is real. Thank you all for helping me to see the value of human friendship.

Colin Devine is a freshman studying PLS and business. He wants to learn a good magic trick. Email him at cdevine1@nd.edu if you can help.