And finally...

This week, I would like to talk about the concept of finality. Pretty broad term right? I'm not really quite sure what I want to say about it yet, but we'll see... wherever the page takes me.

Hmm, let's talk about things ending. That seems like an ironic place to start. SO. I clearly chose to write about finality because this is the final blog post and the semester, and year, are both coming to an end. How quickly time does pass...

Things ending definitely have a lot of rhetoric behind them. Thinking about the end of school fills us with feelings of joy for the summer, yearning for the end to come to pass and stress for all the work we know has to be done before we get there. Then, over the summer, we look forward to the end of our jobs or the end of our chores so that we can hang out with friends or go to dinner with parents etc. etc.

Then, when it gets close enough to August, we begin looking forward to the end of summer. We itch to come back to State, to see all of our friends, start new classes and begin a new adventure. Then about 3 weeks into the semester we realize, "Damn, where did summer go? I want that back, I can't wait 'till next summer."

We seem to always be looking forward to the end of things don't we?

Then, come graduation time, there will be tears of joy and tears of sadness. There will be nostalgia, reminiscing and pictures with friends we know we may never see again. There will be happiness for the collective accomplishments of the class of 2015 and there will be fear for the next unfamiliar step in the staircase- because we can never be quite sure just how far up we will have to step to stand on it.

But on this day, we don't think of the fear. We don't think of the next step. We don't think of the internships and jobs we may or may not have lined up. We try not to think about the future without some of our closest friends.

On this day, we don't think about the end.

On this day, we truly live in the moment- and we are happy.

I think Henry David Thoreau hit the nail on the head, it's all about living in the moment. That is the key to happiness. If you're always worried about the next thing, you'll never appreciate what is good right now.

And almost everything that is good is only good now. Memories are nice, but they are even better (and much less necessary), if you really enjoyed yourself while it was happening.

Living in the future?

Impossible.

You will never experience anything if you are always waiting to experience something, whether it be good or bad.

Well. This surely didn't take to the page how I expected. But I'm pretty happy with it. Guess I was just living in the moment while writing it huh? (<-- see what I did there?)

Here's a final remark for my final blog post which is on finality: I am NOT saying that you should never have plans or expectations or indeed, that you should never look forward to something. Sometimes, the anticipation of an event is on of the best parts. HOWEVER, there is a difference between keeping those things in your head and focusing on them.

Example: Right now, everyone is undoubtedly looking forward to the summer for one reason or another. But if you let it control your thoughts, you will not live for now and you'll probably lose focus on school which, though we hate to admit it, is what's most important when we're not on break.

Anyway. I hope this wasn't completely incoherent and maybe it was mildly enjoyable. I wish you all a lovely end of semester and an even more lovely summer. I hope it is safe, productive, fun, ridiculous, miraculous, fantastical, emotional and all sorts of other adjectives.

But mostly, I hope you live your summer for the moment. That way, when Fall semester rolls around, you're ready to go and you're not wishing to get back what you feel like you missed.