It is not uncommon, at the end of something, to look back to its beginning. It is also not uncommon to look at the previous end leading to the beginning. Graduating from college may cause you to retrace your time spent there. Leaving a place that became as familiar as home, its tough, and it doesn’t get easier the second time around. You feel the same pang of sadness as you did when you first realized you wouldn’t be wearing your school uniform anymore as you do now, when you realize that you wont be walking down those college halls anymore. You feel the same anxiety of not knowing how college would be, how the other kids would be, how you would be in this new realm of freedom and opportunity as you do now, entering another realm of responsibility and high competition, where the stakes frighteningly do matter.
Right there, standing at one precipice, I watch my sister face the next. Its all so similar yet so wildly different. But the emotions remain a constant. A fixed biological reaction to any challenge, threat or change. Doesn’t matter the situation. It’s all the same. Maybe everything will be all right. Countless others have been in my exact position, and though nearly no one gets out scot free, everyone does survive the college experience. The only thing that makes it so stressful is the waiting and the speculation. The problem is that it’ll never live up to expectation. Especially if one spends hours and days, hell, years contemplating it. Whether it’s the best or the worst, reality can never compete with imagination, so why try?
I have 10 days to the moment of truth. Am I in or am I out? In other words am I good enough? The dread is that I get a letter saying, “No, we regret to inform you that you are not, in fact, as talented as you or we thought you were and best of luck for whatever else that you can manage”. Even worse than that would be to not get any letter at all, as if saying, “not only are you not good enough to join, you’re not good enough for us to reject you either.” That’s the dread. But the fear? The fear is getting a letter which tells me all my dreams have come true, that I’m good enough, that its time to say goodbye to this old life I was sick of anyway and come, running through mustard fields like an old Hindi movie, to this new adventurous place and then be let down by what I thought it would be like.
Using this fear as a mantra, I had made a resolution to not think about it. To keep an open mind and not look at the downside of everything. Or, on the other hand, lionize the future and possibilities. The future is nothing but the next line I’m about to write, the next two seconds of thought or the next five minutes where I may get up and go to the bathroom. The future is now. And then it’s gone. Just as fast as it came. So what do I do with the future? The answer seems obvious to me. I do nothing and I do everything.
So it doesn’t really matter whether I spend the next year in India’s premiere design institute or I spend it working in an animal shelter while taking an English course. Because its just going to come and go so fast right? But the real question that plagues me is will I matter no matter what I do? Will I make a difference? Will I affect anyone the way I want to? I’m not saying I want to rule the world…I’m just saying I want to be able to change it. I read some where that a wise man asked in the arrogance of his youth to be able to change the world. Being humbled by the truth, in his middle age he asked to be able to change those around him and in the enlightenment of his old age he asked to be able to change himself when the people around him, or the world itself, actually changed. Chances are he was probably correct, but I think I can change my world. I can make it better, I can make it brighter, I can make it happier, and I can be relevant. But I need the opportunity.
So I stand at the precipice, at the end of all I can ever remember knowing, ready to plunge into an abyss of opportunity and failure. And just as I leap off, I look up at my sister already changing the world around her, without even knowing it, and I smile. I'll be there some day.
