Graduation Rumination IX - Beauty in the Fleeting

March 23, 2015.

I mentioned a few weeks ago in my blog “Graduation Rumination VI - A Season of Lasts” that I’m somewhat appreciative of graduation because it’s made me see Gordon in an entirely new light. I’ve talked about the idea of beauty in the fleeting before, too, but I think it’s worth revisiting.

If there’s one good thing that’s come of graduation it’s that it made me fall back in love with Gordon again. I was lucky enough to come to Gordon freshman year and love it. Really, I didn’t just like it here, I loved every single thing about it, the people, the professors, the classes I was taking, the campus, the town, the beaches near by, every single thing. But somewhere in between a bad break up, some lost friendships, a few bad grades, and classes I wasn’t all that into, I started to lose that initial love I had when I got to Gordon. Situations and circumstances tarnished the good that I could see so clearly before. Layers of anger and rejection and discouragement built up. The school I had come to love was hidden behind these layers of pain and hurt. I had completely lost track of all the good. It was as if my eyes were trained to only see the bad, and I couldn’t look around it. No matter how hard I tried I was caught in a perspective of negativity. And my inability to break free from my perspective resulted in my resignation. I gave into it, I let it become my default perspective, I let it become who I was, and I let it completely obliterate any good I had once seen here. But somehow when you know something wont be around forever you begin to see the good in it again. You begin to realize that there is so much beauty around you, around any pain you might be going through. There is so much good, if you would only chose to see it. I couldn’t for a while, chose to see it, I mean, but somehow I was forced to. Somehow the impending date of graduation made me realize what I really had here. Those layers I couldn’t see past? They started to break away, erode, dissipate, until they were gone for good. It wasn’t until I realized my time left here could be counted in days that I was able to fall in love with Gordon all over again. I guess what they say is true, “you never know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I got lost for a while in the middle. I got distracted and discouraged and I lost sight of what I had. But man, am I sure glad I found it again while there was still time left. I’m so thankful for the experiences I’ve had at Gordon, even the bad ones. Back in my sophomore year (though it could’ve been my junior) I tweeted “they say college is the best years of your life. I can honestly say that’s not the case.” But today I couldn’t disagree with my past self more. You’ve only got four years of your entire life in college and if you don’t at least try to love it with all you’ve got, you’re doing something wrong.

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