something to ponder...
Are you ready?
A year has passed and now we stand on the brink of
returning to a world where we are surrounded by the
paradox of everything, and yet nothing, being the
same.
In two weeks we will reluctantly give our hugs and
fight the tears while we say goodbye to people who
were once just names on a sheet of paper to return
to people that we hugged and fought tears to say
goodbye to before we ever left.
We will leave our best friends to return to our best
friends.
We will go back to the places we came from and go
back to the same things we did last summer and every
summer before that.
We will come into town on that same familiar road,
and even though it has been months, it will seem
like only yesterday. As you walk into your old
bedroom, every emotion will pass through you as you
reflect on the way your life has changed and the
person you have become.
You suddenly realize that the things that were most
important to you a year ago don't seem to matter so
much anymore, and the things you hold highest now,
no one at home will completely understand.
The memories and the stories from school won't mean
anything to anyone at home and you resent that they
can't share that happiness with you.
Who will you call first?
What will you do your first weekend home with your
friends?
How long before you actually start missing people
barging in without calling or knocking?
Who will get pizza at three in the morning with you
now?
How long until you adjust to sleeping alone in a
room again?
Then you start to realize how much things have
changed, and you realize the hardest part of
college is balancing the two completely different
worlds you now live in, trying desperately to hold
on to everything all the while trying to figure out
what you have to leave behind.
In the matter of one day's traveling time, we will
leave our world of living next door to our best
friends, walking across campus to eat, instant
messenger, 8:30 am classes, and the perpetual
procrastination to a world that will seem foreign to
us despite the fact that we lived in it for eighteen
years.
But it is different now. We now know the meaning of
true friendship.
We know who we have kept in touch with over the past
year and who we hold dearest in our hearts.
We've left our high school world to deal with the
real world.
We've had our hearts broken, we've fallen in love,
we've helped our best friends overcome depression,
stress, and death, and we've stayed up all night on
the phone just to talk to a friend in need.
There have been times when we've felt so helpless
being hours away from home when we know our families
needed us, and there are times we know we have made
a difference.
Two weeks from now, we will leave.
Two weeks from now, we take down our pictures, and
pack up our clothes.
No more going next door to do nothing for hours on
end.
We will leave our friends whose random emails and
phone calls will bring us to laughter and tears this
summer.
We will take our memories and dreams and put them
away for now, saving them for our return to this
world.
Two weeks from now, we will arrive. We will unpack
our bags and have dinner with our families.
We will drive over to our best friend's house and do
nothing for hours on end.
We will return to the same friends whose random
emails and phone calls have brought us to laughter
over the year.
We will unpack old dreams and memories that have
been put away for the past year.
In two weeks we will dig deep inside to find the
strength and conviction to adjust to change and
still keep each other close.
And somehow, in some way, we will find our place
between theses two completely different worlds.
Are you ready?