Part of me thinks I will sneeze, and college will be over. I am resonating with the adage “the days are long, but the years are short” right about now. I am about a week away from no longer being a freshman. Yikes! I still have trouble digesting the fact I am not 12 years old (they say I am turning 20). I have learned so much through my first year, a lot of which is densely packed into the second semester. I feel a universe different than before I entered college. Let us rocket-up and tour that universe briefly.

What immediately comes to mind is the idea of taking things as they come, sprinkled with a little bit of the idea “nothing is black and white.” To evaluate this statement, I’d like to first like to talk a bit about my first semester. To be frank, I could not have asked for a better start on paper. I had great teachers, friends, and adventures. I met my closest friends – the five other folks on my improv team – and had some really great shenanigans that I will never forget. This was the source of a lot of confusion for me, because I did not feel well in the least. One day on my way to class in early September, my entire body began to experience intense tingling and pins and needles. This was but one of many neuropathic abnormalities I began to feel. These new occurrences absolutely frightened me! Heebie-jeebies in the truest sense. They lasted for 5 months. I still have not had that MRI. So it goes, I guess. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I could not talk about the amazing things I experienced the following semester without touching on the rather painful journey to get there. What did I do to get there? Well, its pretty simple actually. It was a matter of perspective. When everything should be fine and seemingly those around you are having “the times of their lives” – but you feel like electrified mashed potatoes – there is an important take away to be had: you need to dissolve the past, future, and expectation.

I think it is really easy to compare yourself to others and to futurize if you are not feeling well. But I think most will eventually realize, comparison is a bit of a fool’s errand (of which I am ABSOLUTELY guilty). Human beings are infinitely complex, it is quite like comparing different infinities. What is true for one does not apply to another. Or maybe it does… the point is – THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW. Furthermore, the future will not happen the way you expect it to. The future is by nature a color no one has or will ever see. To try and predict it is energy that could be going towards the present (which will actually shape your future). Lastly, I’ve learned not to expect specific things. I expected first semester to be a lot different than it was (not a tingle-fest… That being said, I now may have insight into what an electron might feel like). Where would the fun in life be, if everything we expected happened? The best moments in life are things we do not expect. All great stories take you to places you never thought of.

I will never know what made the tingling quell (to some extent). I will also never know its cause. What I do know, is that after I took life as it came things stated to get better. Second semester was amazing, almost dream like before our pandemic. I could never have imagined it. So, if I could boil down the most important thing I’ve learned it would be this:

Take a deep breath, man. You can always do anything if you are so inclined to do so. Are you tingling? That is okay. Its not the end of the world at all. All you can ever do is try your best, and that is always good enough. You cannot hold anything against yourself if you do that. You are never condemned to feel a certain way ever. Life is a dynamic and infinitely changing thing – and I will bet you all the money in my piggy bank life will be more beautiful that anything you could have ever imagined. So, take it easy. There are always paths to take, solutions to be implemented, and contentment to be found. Focus on right now, not tomorrow or yesterday. Find solace and even happiness in not knowing how things will be, because if you knew everything well… that’s no story. You wouldn’t read a book if you knew what happened, now would you? Go make that life of yours the best story you ever knew. Its definitely possible. And it starts with uncertainty.

I feel like the above paragraph turned into a quasi-pep talk to myself. Haha, the mind is such a funny thing.