<\/p>\n
In the spring of 2002, I signed up for a night class in existentialism. The choice was an emotional one. College was off to a rocky start. My education had no clear purpose; my friends were more like acquaintances; the whole country was careening toward an abyss. Meaning, in other words, was elusive, and I wanted to hear from the people who\u2019d explained its elusiveness best.<\/p>\n
The instructor was Tom Meyer, only a lowly University of Pennsylvania graduate student, though I didn\u2019t know it at the time. We arrived at the first class to find him sitting at a conference table, folding and unfolding a paperclip. To my immense satisfaction, he looked just like I thought an existentialist should: gaunt, pasty-faced. Black hair standing up from his skull. His clothing ratty at the collar and cuffs. For a first-day icebreaker, he had us go around the room and say our name, the name of an actor, and a type of deli meat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I soon realized that Tom was a cult hero on campus. A person worthy of shouted conversations at parties. \u201cYou have Tom Meyer? Oh man, I\u2019m obsessed with that guy!\u201d There was no shortage of anecdotes. The paperclip, for instance, turned out to be a fixture, and the icebreaker game, though we numbered only fifteen in the class, continued with variations the entire semester: say your name and the name of a department store; say your name and a kind of road kill.<\/p>\n
Once he paused discussion to tell us how he\u2019d stayed up all night rearranging his furniture, so that now his couch, chairs, and bookshelves faced into the walls.\u00a0When, the next week, someone followed up, he said that he\u2019d switched the furniture back, but couldn\u2019t quite reproduce the original placements, resulting in the apartment feeling strangely off.<\/p>\n
Of course he knew his philosophy, and he delivered on all the big players: Sartre, de Beauvoir, lots of Nietzsche. I believed it all, gobbled it up, and allowed the readings\u2014accompanied by Tom\u2019s insights\u2014to weigh me down with heavy ideas. Existence precedes essence. Zarathustra descended from the mountaintop in vain.<\/p>\n
On my walk home after class through West Philadelphia, I used to call my mother: our conversations inevitably derailing to the subject of my despair.<\/p>\n
Finally, she was on to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s that existentialism class!\u201d she said. \u201cI want you to drop that class!\u201d<\/p>\n
In part, my mother was right. Though I was by no means a naturally cheerful person, the shaky uncertainty that kept me from sleeping those Tuesday nights, that made my e-mails, textbooks, and instant messages blanks, was also unlike me. I needed a change, and the end of the semester, the warm, pink May, came as a relief.<\/p>\n
I still have the course books. They\u2019re lined up on a shelf over my desk. In ten years I\u2019ve barely touched them, though I\u2019d think about the class now and then. This summer, five weeks after our daughter was born, my husband asked, out of the blue, \u201cWhat was the name of that existentialism teacher you had?\u201d<\/p>\n
A fellow Penn alum had linked to an article. Tom Meyer, an assistant professor at Temple University, had killed himself on August 6. I was shocked.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was an act,\u201d I protested. \u201cI could have sworn it was an act.\u201d<\/p>\n
I meant the class, his idiosyncrasies, his artful embodiment of existential clich\u00e9s. Bizarrely, my first thought upon hearing the news was something akin to, Now this is taking it too far.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t read the obituary right away. Not while still unsteady with childbirth hormones. Not (superstitiously) with the baby in my arms. But one night I looked. He had jumped out the window of his fourth-story apartment. Rumors circulated that he\u2019d lost his job, then later rumors said he hadn\u2019t. A friend wrote eloquently of her disbelief. Only four stories. That stuck in my mind. It didn\u2019t seem high enough to guarantee a painless death\u2014if that was indeed his intention.<\/p>\n