I lay down on the couch wishing someone’s arms were wrapped around me. Arms that have no time invested in my complexities, arms that haven’t memorized my form conforming to the structure of their body as I sink into it. Arms that will love me independent of emotion and in the texture of my breath, sense the meaning of the silence between all the thoughts that I can’t articulate very well.

But I don’t want to write a sad, lonely little column so I’ll allow my thoughts to revert to something a representative from the Ohio Education Association was talking about.

He spoke about how the use of social media has become an integral tool that allows you to “brand” yourself as a marketable member of the 21st century society and create an identity that people all over the world can buy into. Recalling that assertion now, the initial revulsion comes back to me and I can’t help but think about cattle being prodded by an unknown herder into the realm of their future, digital selves.

I truly hope my identity has nothing to do with the way I market it to the rest of the world because I am just a girl who is lying on the couch trying to imagine something interesting for potential readers to dream. And I am just another suffering soul trying to solve the problem of existence with education.

We all seem to think that salvation will come only to those enlightened with prescribed syllabi, but we are just learning how to ignore everything our money can’t buy. We are trained to acknowledge relative relevance and obliged to apply it to a world in which our professors, legislators and peers assume we will devour unquestionably.

In the spirit of American capitalism, we will secure our purposes and participate in holidays that demand of us purchased relaxation.

We will dress in business clothes and try to present our awkward, non-digital selves to a world with an actual atmosphere, where mouths move when conversations are had as opposed to attempting to decode syntax in text messages from strangers whom we’re quite familiar with, despite what the proponents of oblivion say.

We will forget our dreams abruptly when our alarm clocks wake us up and we will go to work.

We will forget the limbs we longed for and the reasons why we’re sad. And lonely will be just a phase by the time exhaustion sets in, by the time I go to bed.

Nicole Hennessy is a senior magazine journalism major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].