Reflections on a Human Pyramid

It was a beautiful night. We had the perfect number of people for a human pyramid. There were six of us, varied enough in height and weight to make tiers without breaking anyone’s back. We had a carpet to fall on and a slew of problem sets, papers, and readings to distract ourselves from. I was on the bottom tier, trembling and giggling alternately as each roommate added herself to the structure. After quite a bit of debate, shrieks, and near-arm-collapses, our pyramid existed for just a few moments. Then we dissolved into a jumble of limbs and exclamations that, I imagine, made the boys in the room below us cast a bewildered glance at the ceiling.

That night made the next morning seem all the more terrible. When I learned that Peter Cai, a student I had never met, had passed away, it sent me reeling. I felt a reflexive clench in my chest and I suddenly wanted to hold everyone around me to keep them safe. In that one instant, I felt a lot of things for which there are no words. How do you put into words the fact that you’re sorry for all the times you were petty, every time you were sullen, and every minute that passed you by as you poured over some text you can’t remember now? How do you tell someone that you are so happy they are alive? Why does it seem so inadequate to say, “Be careful” and “If anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I would do?”

There are not always words for these matters of life and death. All the clichés and all the trite slogans about enjoying life never seem true until the moments when we are confronted with life’s end. Sometimes you can’t do anything but hold tighter to what you have in the hope that it will stay in your arms for one more day.

No matter how easy it seems to live and love on a day-to-day basis, we live in a place that sometimes values the distant future over the joys of the present. Harvard is built around the idea that human pyramids and laughter and conversation are all things that should come second to grades and careers. But in the face of inevitable death, human pyramids are a thing of paramount importance. In all their precariousness and closeness, in all the effort they take and the time they waste, they are really all that is wonderful in this world. We laugh, we fall down, we hurt ourselves, we hurt each other, and then it’s over. We can’t make a human pyramid—or a life, for that matter—without supporting and being supported by all those around us, aware that the whole thing could topple at any moment.


Marina S. Magloire ’11, a Crimson editorial writer, is a history and literature concentrator in Kirkland House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.