Youth is a time for living. "Live while we're young!" I believe there is no better time for adventure and exploration - of both the world and of ourselves - than when we are young. However, this provides us with a predicament. We, as youth, convince ourselves that when we hike a tall mountain, when we go cliff diving, when we travel on our own for the first time during spring break in college, that we have truly lived. Although all of the adventurous and risky experiences one could think of - like skydiving, hang gliding, surfing, snorkeling, (all of the things that we quite possibly are only capable of while we are young), are an exciting aspect of life - they are not "living". Rather, they are simply what is necessary for the journey in life - part of the adventure, but not the adventure itself.

So, what is living? I do not think many young adults have truly and fully lived. Living is an experience. It is an experience that requires heartbreak, loss, learning the difference between infatuation and deeply loving someone, making mistakes, feeling lost, et cetera. Now, I myself am a young adult, so how could I know what living is after everything I have just claimed? Well, that is exactly the point. I have not lived. I realized how much I hadn't lived when an old friend I had graduated with passed away by suicide. I thought I had lived. I thought four wheeling on an ATV in Puerto Rico was living. I thought cliff diving in El Yunque Rainforest was living. I thought hearing a Latin mass by the Roman Catholic Pope in Kraków, Poland, was living. I thought that all of the adventure was what made up life. However, when I heard the news of my friend's passing, it instantly became clear to me that the world holds much more than we believe at such a young age.

I crave the wisdom my parents, or better yet, my grandparents possess. I thought I knew heartbreak. Though the hurt we felt when we were rejected in the school yard was very real and very valid, it was not the heartbreak we actually have to experience to understand such a pain. It was not the loss of someone we loved. As many married adults will tell you - to love is to permanently commit yourself to someone. Thus, it was rather an infatuation, a fleeting affection. It is not entirely impossible to love at a young age, and it happens. However, a majority of the time when we say, "I loved him/her", we did not. Hence, "love" is our choice of wording. This is a prime example of the youth misconception that we have experienced and done all within the first twenty years or so of our lives. And this is the heart of the problem.

When we convince ourselves we have already lived, we hold ourselves back from actually living. When we accept horse back riding in Tennessee as being all that we need to live, we never learn what life truly is. What we think is living is adventure, and when we realize this, we then mistake fleeting moments in our lives as fulfilling the true qualifications of living. We convince ourselves that we have felt lost, though few have known what it is like to feel so alone with nowhere to go in the world at such a young age. We convince ourselves that our high school sweetheart of five months was our truest and deepest love. Yet, we would most likely not sacrifice ourselves entirely and fully for that person. The moment we can open our eyes and accept that what we tell ourselves has brought us through life has been merely moments, fleeting experiences, building blocks that prepare us for the big leagues, is the moment we finally make it to that big league.

I am in college and have only begun to slightly understand parts of the wisdom that has been passed down to me. I am only beginning my discovery of friendship, loss, love, heartbreak, myself, the list goes on. The adventures of life have been part of my life for a long time, but the aspects of life that matter to my development into adulthood have barely started to showcase themselves in my life.

The solution? Open our eyes. Realize where we are now is not all there is to living. Adventure does not equal life, it is simply another experience we have to encounter in order to live. Understand that where you are right now is temporary, and embrace the change that presents itself. Few things are permanent, so what you are feeling right now is likely temporary. What you encounter today will not be the same as what you encounter tomorrow. Know that wisdom takes time. When we embrace that adventure is not all there is to life and that what we claim are life experiences are, in reality, temporary moments in our youth, then we can actually take a step closer to truly living. I think the phrase should be "explore, pursue adventure, while we are young" and "live while we grow"! So, are you blinding yourself? Or are you accepting that there is so much more to the world than you think? To own and conquer the world, we must first acknowledge that we do not know the world. We tell ourselves the world is ours, but is it? I urge all the young people reading this to open up to new ideas and new experiences, understand there is no guarantee for anything in the future, and that where you have been and what you have gone through are not the end of the obstacles. Risk heartbreak, be yourself, do everything with the potential to lose everything, and finally live! Life is so full of discovery, so stop looking at the same thing, trying to convince yourself that because you've had your first beer or crashed your first car that you have seen it all. Those are merely steps towards what life really is and, in some cases, are not even necessary to live a full life. So, open your eyes, take a breath, step into life, and discover what life really is and what it truly holds.