Tea With Lily

College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at lm688@ cornell.edu. Tea with Lily runs every other Monday this semester.

Some of you might recall one of my previous columns when I described my struggles getting an SDS accommodation. It has since only gone downhill from there. In this column, I will be bringing my experience as an example of how staff and faculty at Cornell can mistreat and mislead students trying to get SDS accommodations.

As a person with Student Disability Services accommodations, I was entitled to ask my instructors for deadline extensions along with many other accommodations. In fact, I had two letters back to back, one for mental health reasons and one for my physical health after I was hospitalized. Te SDS email sent to me stated: “Te letters will not disclose your condition, just that accommodations are necessary

Rather, I see it as an indication of how much times have changed. Te Ithaca that Fukuyama learned in is not the same one we inhabit now. Today, it would be much harder to argue that liberal democracy has superseded above all. Te optimistic fervor of the 90s has given way to something distinctly darker, not only in politics but in society at large.

As young adults, our lives have been marked by recessions, political polarization, war, climate change, unemployment, a pandemic … all of which we have the privilege of watching on screens in hand-held real time, coping with collective grief through Tweets that would take an archaeologist years to decipher — assuming, of course, that Twitter exists long enough for that. It’s harder to buy a house and get a job than it was several my day-to-day life. I have erroneously translated the existential anxiety of the time we live in to the way I see myself and the microcosms I inhabit: Why bother making new friends if I’m a senior, destined to leave Ithaca in a semester’s time? Why apply for a certain fellowship decades ago, much less to reckon with the broader state of the world we live in.

In short, I think there is reason to be cynical, and I don’t think you need to drown yourself in political science books to recognize that.

Yet, I also find that I have fallen into a trap of conflating my fears and cynicism towards the world with if I know it’s competitive and unrealistic to win? Why enjoy the sunset if it’s going to get dark at 4 p.m.?

I’m exaggerating, of course — I would never question appreciating an Ithaca sunset. But it is in these moments that I’m trying to catch myself, to feel grounded in the present moment without lamenting the past, dreading the future or fearing the world too much.

I am still resistant towards perpetual optimism, what the Internet has termed “toxic positivity” — a dismissal of negative emotions in favor of constant cheer. Pastel Instagram posts spewing platitudes about how “everything will work out” and “there are no bad days” can only go so far.

However, there has to be a middle ground: a space for acknowledging the difficulties of the world while embracing the day-to-day joys, leaving room for cynicism towards the outside while appreciating the hope that lies within.

A song called “Cynicism” by Nana Grizol came up in my Spotify recommended list about a year ago. Expecting a relatable track full of bitter skepticism against the world, I gave it a listen. I still return to it today for a melancholy reminder of the value that optimism holds.

“Cynicism isn’t wisdom, it’s a lazy way to say that you’ve been burned.

It seems, if anything, you’d be less certain after everything you ever learned.”