To the Shore!

One of the great joys of summer. The air is sweet, the sun is bright, the girls are lightly clad and the days are wonderfully lazy. The beach is a great place to get your frat on, but I enjoyed a quiet, relaxing partial week with Audrey, my parents, Lil' Sis and her boyfriend.

A very quiet week overall. The beach trip has become somewhat of a meditation period for me, a retreat from the normal in an overwhelmingly beautiful local. Laying on the beach in the dead of night, gazing at the night sky as the waves crash a mere ten feet away is a paralyzing experience on just how powerful and vast the world is. The ocean looks huge during the day as you stand on it's bank and stare out to the horizon, but it is completely dwarfed by the night sky with its millions of stars uninhibited by the light pollution of urban life. I couldn't help but hypothesize at what else is out there as I gazed at stars that have galaxies zooming around them millions of miles away.

I love to lie on the beach at night and consider my place in the vast expanse, wondering my value, wondering any detriment I might be to existence, wondering where to improve and where to go in my life. But I also like to joke that the night sky is God's IMAX, allowing you to reminisce and play out your memories on the biggest screen known to man.

I shared this experience with Audrey, and we lay under the stars talking for hours about our relationship, our future, our senior years, our friends, our jobs. Everything and anything, we meandered for hours.

But I realized something later, and I'd like to share my thought. At soon to be 21-years old, I know little of what to expect from the world and my life. And to this point, I have largely lived my life in the constructs of my parents' rules, or society's rules, and, to a large extent, the rules of my Catholic faith. But as I sat under the stars with Audrey in my arms, I began to think about my daily actions, and how much they are concerned with the future. I was particularly struck by something Audrey said.

"I always expect to be happy with things in my life, but am disappointed when I'm not," she said. "But I've realized that my happiness is up to me, and you have to make yourself happy."

I wasn't entirely clear on what she meant, but I didn't ask her to clarify, because it struck me personally, and I selfishly wished to hold on to my interpretation. Many times I feel like I'm pushing through my current situation, hoping for something on the horizon, expecting the culmination of one thing and the beginning of another to make me happy, but it's rarely the case. Too often we work too hard for the future at the expense of our present, or waste our present with the promise that it will be better in our future. Carpe Diem, I have heard so many times, but, while clichéd, is somewhat true.

College is an eye-opening experience, and not always in a good way. Your life was run by your parents, school schedule, coaches and by your friends in high school. You chose activities and friends based on the values passed on to you from above, and while the thrill of stepping outside of these lines gave pleasure, you mostly lived a happy existence within the constraints. But college affords you freedom; no longer are your parents in the other room with an eye over your shoulder. Gone are the rigid schedules of high school, the teachers who are quick to correct and the friends you grew up with. College brings with it a four-year window to set your course in life, to choose a career and work towards your degree. Some fail to escape their parents' shadow, and study the discipline hand-picked by their care-givers. Others choose not to be concerned with it, and blissfully spend their time in various frivolous pursuits. But, the one who can treat college as a unique experience, one that can provide perspectives unfounded at other junctures in life is the one who excels.

I spent my freshman year confused and depressed. I longed for a continuation of my high school experience, where I was respected and admired by peers and faculty alike. But in college, I was an unknown entity, and I would have to again prove myself.

My sophomore year was the one of a wise fool. I pledged in the fall, and absorbed all the fun fraternity life had to offer. I planted the seeds of my social life, ones that I reap still to this day. But, I neglected my school work, performed miserably, and suffered under increased supervision from my disgruntled parents and their diminishing trust in my judgment and abilities.

Junior year, anxious to recover from a poor sophomore year, I fretted about the future, about my savings account, or lack thereof, and my accomplishments from college. What had I achieved? What had I learned? I had so many goals as I clutched my diploma in June 2005, and few of them had been realized.

But as I lay on that beach gazing at the Earth's roof with Audrey's words reverberating through my brain, it dawned on me. "Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." My college lesson is this; I've lived it. Degree in hand will help for sure, but that is merely where a college education begins. College is about taking control of your own life, and being happy with it. Your friends, your apartment, your XBox or your 3.5 GPA aren't worth a damn if you aren't happy.

But, don't ask yourself what you want; ask yourself what you have, and go from there. So often all people need is right in front of them, but they are distracted by chasing something placed in their conscience by an outside source. Happiness cannot be defined by the media, or your friends or your parents, it has to be defined by yourself. You aren't too young to fall madly in love, and you aren't too old to build a sandcastle at the beach. We spend so much time worrying and fretting about how many people we know at the bar, and so little time on ourselves. Take a moment today, and ask yourself the last time you felt pure, unadulterated joy, or marveled at something rare and beautiful. And, if you find yourself saying you are too busy now to make it happen, remember, tomorrow can wait for today, because without today, there is no tomorrow.