Have a Happy Hour

Happy Hour is a fine phenomenon, one which is wholly unfamiliar to the college crowd. We go out to drink at 11 p.m., the earliest, and the days of the week on which we do so are normally limited to Thursday through Saturday. That just isn't so for the working world. In the nine-to-five grind, where there are only vocational men and women, the drink is a daily necessity. Centrum every morning. Budweiser every evening.

I'm presently doing the internship gig in New York. This is a summer activity in which at least 50 percent of Harvard students participate at some point or another, though the city may vary to either Boston or Washington. You know the deal--low or no bucks for the possibility of perks, one of which is the daily Happy Hour where beer costs two dollars per bottle and everyone gets, well, happy.

There's nothing much remarkable about Happy Hour other than the false escapist sensation. But people there really don t want to escape, else they would have. Meaning that anyone can set up a cantina south of the border and live the life of the gringo in paradise. Anyone can take off for Russia and start waiting tables. Anyone can go to Nairobi and set up a lemonade stand. But people don't; they remain their vocational selves in one American metropolis or another.

At one of these Happy Hour gatherings, I recalled my last nights in Cambridge one month ago. After finals, the beer was no less plentiful than it is at Happy Hour, though the Sam Adams cost a bit more than what is on tap at Burrito Bar down on Church Street.

One of my roommates was off to Ecuador to write for Let's Go, planning to sip cerveza in Quito. Another roommate was leaving for India to set up small businesses for the poor as part of a Christian mission. A third roommate was on his way to Italy for the orchestra's European tour and fine red wine.

They were escaping in the most physical of senses. That is, they were escaping in seeing farther than the T could take them. It's always struck me as paradoxical how the people I know at Harvard College could be so pre-professional in their dedication to the life of the modern bourgeois, yet so escapist in their avocations. Medicine, or law, even filmmaking, cannot satiate the spirit when they stand alone. So, like the Happy Hour revelers, we seek respite through escapism, even though we never truly escape.

We are bound to the so-called meritocracy which has nurtured us, which has fostered our present selves, upon which our self-esteem has come, in part, to rely. Yet we are disenchanted by the limitations of the present in their finite realm. We cannot help but shrug our shoulders at the bottom line as the common denominator. We may ponder why there are so many songs about rainbows and what s on the other side, but we never really go that far in our search.

Really, there are so many songs about rainbows because we keep wondering what s on the other side, a trait which provides fine testimony to our intellectual curiosity.

If we really wanted to know what was on the other side, then we would sail our ship. We would have Happy Hour every hour and it wouldn't be predicated upon alcohol. We would hike in the Andes mountains full time, or spend our total effort working to help the indigent in Calcutta, or continually enjoying roasted goat in Rome.

As a bible-thumping reader of the New York Times, I've been forced to ruminate upon the pontificating of Frank Rich '71 with reference to the occasion of his 25th class reunion. In June 2023, at my 25th reunion, I hope that I would have more to say than to fondly remember our agitated youth and celebrate our class' current professional life. We are already jaded about the possibilities, already cynical about humanity. Perhaps we can bottom out now, realize our spiritual devastation and create anew.

The year 2023 still sounds like a sci-fi film to me, and who could ever predict our future whereabouts. I am not deluded by work-free fairy tales, but neither am I dissuaded because they are fairy tales. There is another side to that rainbow. Is it enough for us to prance around a single end with our petty games? Or can we move toward the unprofessional and the unknown? I guess we ll find out at the 25th.