P
acifist is a title I started giving myself after
the fateful day I spent with Yoko Ono’s trea-
sure trove of experimental, anti-war art at the
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain on my first trip
abroad. Fifteen years old and wide-eyed, my first plane
trip landed me in the heart of jet-lagged sentimentality
and an art exhibit calling for non-violence. I can point to
that day and know who I became on it, and like anyone,
could point to a great number of other days relevant to
creating the self, with impacts sometimes felt immedi-
ately and other times only much later.
I took Ono for God at the time (her status remains),
and in feeling that
I had stumbled
upon the secrets of the world, I turned ideology into
action, moving from pacifist to peacemaker. Ono’s strat-
egies were simple: Take the things you do and see each
day, and make peace with them. Her famous Hair Peace
became a symbol of the anti-war generation, as she and
many others refused to cut their hair as an act of defy-
ing the violence that would otherwise be shown with
scissors and blades. Bed Peace was another favorite, a
10-day event during which she and John Lennon invited
the press to broadcast their gentility as they led a “bed-
in” advocating for nonviolence. Living this way, with a
conscious extension of effort toward object-awareness
and making peace becomes cumulative, habitual.
Perhaps my own peacemaking has become
cumulative, habitual. Since that fateful
spring day, I have all but tattooed Ono’s
books into my mind, have become a pupil
of the nation’s leading peace scholars,
invested my time in human rights proj-
ects, studied disarmament around
the globe, written plays to nudge the
world toward change, and found
myself speaking in public fora
on issues of citizenship, non-
violence and our chances for
perpetual peace.
And yet as the new year
brought
forth
the
long-
awaited shared experience
of watching the clock, I found
myself ruminating on the areas
of my life with which I had not made
peace. The construction of peace, be it
at micro or macro scales, seems to me
to require only intention and ada-
mancy. Neglected in my previous
pursuits — and at the forefront of
my mind, as the fireworks greet-
ed the new calendar year — was
making peace with the very thing
we stood around to watch: the
passing of time itself.
We are headfirst in the win-
ter semester of university, facing
a multitude of goodbyes: to old
courses and their expired syllabi, to
old selves by way of resolutions for
betterment in 2019, to friends who
will soon graduate and move away.
This liminality and tumult is a source
of real anxiety for me and many others. I
have been known to greet the uncertainties
of the future with stasis and a fear of commit-
ment to that which is fleeting. For many peo-
ple I know, the heartache that time brings
— by taking people we love and the people
we think we are — is an unbearable one.
And yet, watching time pass in that sus-
pended state after midnight on New Year’s
incited reflection on the momentousness of 2018. To take
stock of a year in the life of the self is to recall its full-
ness: in joys and disappointments, solitudes and compa-
ny. For me, 2018 was a year of incomparable growth and
mobility. I spent a fourth of it living in Iceland and solo-
traveling throughout Scandinavia, during which I felt
constantly aware of time’s strange behavior. I wandered
in an extended period of heightened sensitivity, loving a
place and its landscapes, art and people wholeheartedly,
fully. Every seaside mountain and cat roaming the street
and stroll through a garden invoked in me tremendous
love.
My heart was a thousand unsent thank-you cards and
a thousand unsent love letters every moment of every
day.
Local friends and I drove through countryside,
lounged in cafes, and hiked postcard-style lands, and
each moment, I knew, was the last of its kind. For three
months, I was in a constant state of loving — deeply —
and leaving. The solo travel was just as liminal. The
cityscapes and hostel friends filled me and my days with
a cinematic wholeness — the discovery and subsequent
tenderness toward the details of the Scandinavian land-
scape was constant.
So, too, was the leaving.
For a long while after I returned to the States, I
grieved for the too intense loving-and-leaving in which
my heart had engaged. Time, it seemed, had taken back
everything it gave.
To make peace with the passage of time means to
accept the constancy of this fluctuation. That the lim-
inality is the guarantee. That the loving comes with the
leaving. To me, having to say goodbye to those we care
for is made easier when we remember the world is small,
and if we’re lucky, life is long. Making peace with the
passage of time means granting yourself the opportu-
nity to feel and care fully, no matter the rate of return.
Time-induced iterations of our selves are perhaps our
greatest gifts. We both shed and acquire faults and fail-
ings, virtues and successes. We are both timeworn and
always reborn. Perhaps our transience is our only guar-
antee. If that is so, making peace with time means ach-
ing for our old selves only in moderation, knowing that
new ones are in constant creation.
The 15-year-old could not have dreamed what she
would become, or what the world around her would
become, or that she would find herself, at 20, on a Reyk-
javik shoreline looking at the inscriptions on Ono’s Peace
Tower. Thankfully she had the foresight to let go of the
pieces of her self that no longer became her, embracing
transience as a tool for change instead of a penalty. Per-
haps, in the quest for peacemaking, I will do the same.
My heart has learned how to be simultaneously full of
goodbye letters and greeting cards. Maybe this making
of peace with the passage of time is to 2019 what Hair
Peace was to the ‘70s.
May we all strive to make a little more peace in these
lives, transient as they are.
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
2B
Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement
3B
BY EMILY RUSSELL, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
Time peace
Managing Statement Editor
Andrea Pérez Balderrama
Deputy Editors
Matthew Harmon
Shannon Ors
Designers
Liz Bigham
Kate Glad
Copy Editors
Miriam Francisco
Madeline Turner
Photo Editor
Annie Klusendorf
Editor in Chief
Maya Goldman
Managing Editor
Finntan Storer
statement
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | JANUARY 16, 2019
A
round a corner you might oth-
erwise stroll past on Main
Street, there is a set of glass
doors between ivory white brick that
holds the smallest, most restless Cuban
eatery in town. Home to coconut cream
milkshakes, community tables, and
burgers stacked with eggs, guacamole
and fries, Frita Batidos is continuously
brimming with culinary enthusiasts
from open ‘til close.
As sacred as Fritas has been to Ann
Arbor’s savory landscape for the last
eight years, it is hard to deny its success.
And in a parallel and perfect universe,
there would be a Frita Batidos gracing
at least one canopy sign in every met-
ropolitan city in the U.S — at least the
Michigan alumni could attest to that.
So, what if there was?
Fritas rakes in $8.50 for each burger
it so artistically serves, but building out
several locations is still a slow and pric-
ey feat. Let’s say they decide to build a
couple dozen locations over the next few
decades.
In its theoretical expansion, if Fri-
tas funds were to run dry, a way to
gain access to millions of dollars is by
going public: letting laymen get a slice
of the pie (or rather, a bite of the burg-
er). Investors nationwide can purchase
a share, or a stock, of Fritas and own a
fraction of what once was just the little
restaurant down Washington Street. So,
needing access to thousands of investors
to be able to expand more rapidly, Fritas
takes the leap and files to go public.
After a regulatory green light is sig-
naled by Wall Street and the federal
government, bankers and attorneys
tend to the grunt work. They analyze
when to release shares to the public,
how much each share will be, and iron
out the details. And then, on the little
ticker that scrolls robotically across
your screen each weekday, FRTA▲14.2%
joins the pack.
This “pack” is otherwise known as
an index. Like the Dow Jones (DJIA) or
S&P 500, an index is made up of tens,
hundreds or even thousands of com-
panies that fit certain criteria that can
speak to their holistic performance. For
example, the S&P 500 is a listing of the
500 largest companies in the U.S. While
Frita Batidos could eventually size up
to eatery behemoths McDonald’s and
Chipotle, it may find itself listed in
the Russell 2000 Index: a compilation
of 2,000 small public companies that
benchmarks small market cap stocks in
the U.S.
Now, as an investor with the ability
to purchase shares of Fritas, you want
to make sure you’re getting the best
bang for your buck. Essentially, the
mindset to adopt when facing invest-
ment decisions is to purchase at a low
price in hopes that it will rise over the
course you own the share, so you can
eventually sell it in the market at a
higher price, and pocket the difference.
Think of this like a bet. When you
buy a share in a company, you tempt
fortune on either the company or mac-
roeconomic conditions to go well for
the time period you plan on holding
that investment.
Your Fritas investment in action: If
you buy a share of Fritas at $20 and its
fate turns south, you lose $2 if it sinks
to $18.
Don’t bite? If you buy 20 shares of
Fritas and things go well — say the
share price increases to $25 — you earn
$100 without lifting a finger.
This price can go up and down for a
myriad of reasons, but fundamentally,
it rests on the company’s performance
and the market’s appetite for Fri-
tas’ stock. The more that people want
to sink their teeth into a soft egg bun
enveloping spicy chorizo, the higher
Fritas revenue will be. And the higher
the revenue, the better off the compa-
ny’s sustenance. As long as Fritas con-
tinues to perform as well as it does on
a Friday night here in Ann Arbor, the
more investors it will attract.
If you decide to take on the investor
role, once you purchase shares in your
first company, you have opened the
cork to bottomless opportunity. You
can pair passion and prognosis to delve
into companies whose growth piques
your interest. And as you accumulate
investments in more companies, you
inaugurate the beginnings of a portfo-
lio.
As you begin to piece your portfolio
together, it is important to keep diver-
sity at the forefront of your decision-
making. While it pains me to report that
just 12-15 percent of Wall Street traders
are women, I’m referring to another
kind of diversity: portfolio diversifica-
tion. For example, if every Main Street
facility was to go public and be listed
on the New York Stock Exchange, it is
unwise to pour your money into Fritas,
bd’s Mongolian Grill and Prickly Pear.
Rather, some of your money should be
allocated to other industries, such as
retail, like Warby Parker or Shinola, or
service industries, like Anneke’s Down-
town Hair & Company. So if restaurants
have a bad week, there’s a good chance
some of your other investments had a
better week.
Beyond the inner workings of the
companies you select, there are great-
er forces applied to every company on
the volatile stock market. While your
companies may perform well on their
own, the stock market is collectively
subject to good and bad news about our
towering economy. So, when purchas-
ing shares, it is important to assess the
health of our overall economic auster-
ity, as its performance will often trump
that of your FRTA holding and other
individual companies, and could be the
determinant of how much you lose or
pocket in your portfolio.
And this, friends, is the stock market
as told by your favorite Cuban burger
place. Need a soda?
BY ROMY SHARMA, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
The stock market, as explained by Fritas
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL