3. Duality

There’s something very tricky about college that most high school seniors don’t anticipate at those graduation parties and banquets. Sure, we knew that dorm food would probably be awful, that parties were going to be crazy, and that parents would emote on move-in day x10. Symbolically, we knew we’d get independence: the freedom to stay up and out all night without repercussion, the ability to skip class without permission, and to dress as scantily as we pleased. We would be able to conduct ourselves however we wanted, whenever we wanted, with whomever and whatever we wanted.

And so, graduation is a celebration of gain.

What we didn’t anticipate is loss. And for the college freshman, the collateral damage on a sense of self can be very high. The parties, the people, the freedom: its intoxicating and seductive in way that only absolute control of one's destiny can be. Unfortunately, the freedom to do anything also yields the freedom to be anything, and therein lies the problem.

Now, before I start sounding like an after school special, warning about how drinking underage can lose you your dream job, your future wife, your perfect parking spot, and claim to a happy life (please excuse my youthful condescension on how substance use is treated in the media), I want to make a point. These experiences are necessary. You have to see the extremes before you see the middle; you have go overboard in order to learn how to swim. Or else you drown in the ignorant, stagnant water that is an unchanged perspective.

I tend to air more with the camp who see change as a necessary factor for personal growth. However, it should be taken into account that I can't speak for every person my age. We're all different, so I guess I can only speak for myself.

But I do know that everyone has that one moment where your life is turned upside down. Where everything is awful and wrong and its all that you can do to keep your insides from bursting and melting all over your history homework. The moment where you stumble into the world you've been tip-toeing around for years; that ever-elusive "adult-ness" that involves mortgages, tax forms, and ultimately, the rest of your life. There is no guarantee to where you're heading: your very structured formative years have been overturned and you're faced with the vastness of destiny.

How could I know this? Easy… I asked.

When at coloring pictures at a friend's apartment, he mentioned he was feeling lost. He was so fed up with feeling that he went for a four hour walk through the streets of Honolulu and while he found nothing new, he still felt better. He couldn't explain much very well, but he had seen a group of people that were having coffee and arguing about whether Clinton or Obama was the better Democratic candidate. And he realized that he wasn't ready for that sort of responsibility; that he wasn't ready for any responsibility.

So his solution for this feeling?

Coloring.

And so I leave you with our night.