Editorial

It is true, and it has consequences.

As my colleagues and I put together this fourth annual Making the Most of College issue of Comment, I was vividly aware that we are addressing it, for the first time, also to my own children, and their friends. And so I dedicate this issue to them, and begin it with a prayer for blessing over students in 2009-2010.

Underneath this issue is the whispered question, “What is it to be human, to be responsible?”

Living ordinary lives with extraordinary delight.

David Simon’s effort to imaginatively portray the complexities of contemporary life in his television series The Wire (my favourite piece of television in a long, long time) is understood by Elijah Anderson as ultimately cynical and by Jacob Weisberg as ultimately hopeful. It is difficult to seriously talk about the complexities of the heartbreaking world in which we live without appearing cynical. And yet, even the most gimlet-eyed and hard-bitten of us yearn for hope.

My own advice, this time around? Three simple practices that have made a big difference in my own learning, as a student and in the years since.

Discerning—and making—what is good.