From the time we are born and we scream our first breath of air, our lives are built around moments. Moments of sadness, moments of happiness and pure joy, to moments of anguish and grieving, to moments of triumph, accomplishment and success. We anxiously await every single moment that lies ahead of us, and they each pass so quickly, so quick that we sometimes don't realize that they are gone.

Much like every twenty-something out there, I watch a lot of romantic movies. I was recently watching "The Vow" featuring Channing Tatum as the male lead *swoon*, and there's one section of the movie that resonated with me deeply in my heart. There's a point where, at the end of the movie, Tatum goes on a monologue talking about moments of impact. I have quoted it below, in case you haven't seen the movie.

”I have a theory too. My theory is about moments. Moments of impacts.

My theory is that, these moments of impact, these flashes of high intensity that completely turn our lives upside down actually end up defining who we are.

The thing is, each one of us is the sum total of every moment that we’ve ever experienced, with all the people we’ve ever known. It is these moments that become our history, like our own personal greatest hits of memories that we play and replay in our mind, over and over again. A moment of total, physical, mental and every other kind of love. So that is my theory, that these moments of impact define who we are. A moment of impact. A moment of impact has potential for change, has ripple effects far beyond what we can predict. Sending some particles crashing together making them closer than before, while sending others off into great ventures, ending where you never thought you’d find them. You see that’s the best thing of moments like these, you can’t, no matter how hard you try, control how they are going to affect you. You just got to let these colliding particles land where they may and wait until the next collision.” (The Vow, Nicholas Sparks)

So I started thinking. I started thinking about my moments. My moments of impact. The most unexpected friendships, the unexpected heartaches, every time I've felt accomplished and felt adventurous. Those are the moments that encompass my being, and I believe that we don't realize that we were changed from them until so much farther down the road.

Let's think about this, what moments are we defined by? What are our moments of impact?

How about your first kiss and your first love? Your first broken heart? Your acceptance to your dream college? The loss of a loved one? Your first failed college exam? Your graduation from high school? These are the moments for us, as young adults in college trying to figure out this crazy thing called life, these are the moments that create our personal greatest hits of memories.

These moments have ripple effects, like aforementioned, and the change the way we think, the way we love, the way we act. While that can have a negative connotation, if we weren't defined by our experiences, wouldn't we continue to make the same mistakes?

Our moments of impact are like Polaroid pictures. Polaroid cameras take a picture, and then the photo comes out of the camera on a piece of Polaroid film. You don't see the picture right away; it takes a minute or two for the picture to completely appear. Much like our moments of impact, we don't always see the full picture right away. Sometimes it can take a period of waiting for us to see and to understand.

We never know when these moments are going to happen; they occur at the most unexpected times. They send these colliding particles out everywhere and they change you. They define you. And, just like the wise Mr. Sparks wrote, we can't control how they affect us. We just can't. We just know that they are going to change us and make us into better, more incredible humans with the ability to love and to learn. We have to wait to see where these moments happen and when the land, and then we'll understand. You just might have to shake it like a Polaroid picture.