“This is it.” And as many times as I say this or think it the truth just doesn’t want to take hold. This is my last year in college. I hope.
And when many of us get to this point there is a part in us just wanting to break away from campus like a shooting star and another part that wants to take root right in the middle of the Quad.
This campus and this town will always be my adoptive home. No other community has helped me become who I am as much as this one and I can feel nothing but gratitude.
Of course there are those moments when I think of the ever so many what ifs in life. If I had gone here, made a move there or had just kept quiet at the right moment. But these are just regrets. And in my view regrets are just a way of memorizing the meaningful events in our life.
I will never regret coming to Murray State. I will never regret switching my major or signing up for remedial courses. Most certainly I will never regret taking a stand for my beliefs and speaking my mind. Above all I can never regret the friends I made, lost and made again.
Life can be a wilderness sometimes. Actually, life is a wilderness most times. We just have to work to find the peace and joy in our lives, whether we realize it or not.
But this is no reason to lose hope in the world we live in. One idea I have come to believe is when we find ourselves in the dark and think there is no light we forget the light is in us.
So this whole piece may seem too much for the first issue of the new year. Usually this sort of writing would come out in the the last paper as a goodbye, good luck and see you in the funny papers column.
This certainly is not that.
It seems more of a reflection toward the new year. I am not sure if one can reflect to the future, but on warm nights when the moon is high it seems like a possibility.
It is certainly the beginning of the end. So I will send out an appeal to all of those leaving the University at the end of the academic year. Share what you have learned. Even if our younger peers on campus do everything in their power not to listen, tell them.
Of course years from now they may tell stories of how they should have listened and you were right all along. But the reality is many of us would not have been so wise had we not made those mistakes ourselves.
Do not ever forget that when we let our own light shine it burns like a wildfire through others. Those fires are the empowerment of a generation. Each time we don’t stand up is a time we welcome the darkness.
So this I will commit to being a light, however dim it may be. That way I can lighten this column up a little.
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