This past week, I finished up finals and moved back home. Along with moving out came the multiple goodbyes. As I begin to write this article, I find myself remembering another one I wrote, back in October titled "How To Miss People, As Told By My Younger Brother".
Back in October, missing people correlated to my friends and family at home. It's crazy how just a few months can make a difference. Now, as I write this article, missing people relates to my second family at school, all the wonderful people I now get to call friends at my second home.
It was not easy saying "goodbye" to the people I have grown accustomed to seeing every day, from the moment I get up to the moment I go to sleep. It seemed unfathomable that I would have to go the next three and a half months without seeing them.
Yet these goodbyes had to happen in order to give us a chance to go home to reset and reboot, prepping for another great year.
Something that I think is important to recognize is that you can call these goodbyes all you want, but in the end, in three short months, we all will be back at school. When I feel sad about the supposed "goodbyes", I remember that it's actually a good thing that I had trouble parting from my friends at school.
It's a sign that things are going well, that I've built a new life for myself here, that something meaningful has happened over the past eight months.
In the same way, realizing that I'll be back at school before I know it reminds me that maybe these aren't goodbyes, but "see you laters". In an age of technology, even though I am not physically with my friends from school, my days are filled with Snapchats, texts, vlogs, and the occasional FaceTime. So, yes, we said goodbye, but I still feel connected to my friends as much as I can.
Talking about leaving school and saying goodbye leads me to another point about what the end of the year signifies, how this act of saying goodbye is not only pointed at other people, but the year itself, and the person you are in this moment. Azar Nafisi encompasses this idea when she says:
"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place. Like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and at this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."
By saying "goodbye" to my friends, moving out and leaving school for three months, I was also saying goodbye to who I am right now.
Each day opens up a new opportunity, a chance to grow.
The 240 or so days in freshman year gave me hundreds of those opportunities to grow. I am not the same person I was at the beginning of freshman year, nor will I ever be again.
There's something frightening yet also reassuring about the fact that I'll "never be this way ever again."
It's hard saying goodbye to the naivety that came with freshman year, the newness of experience and many "firsts" that came throughout the year. I am going to miss "Freshman Year Sam", as I'm sure many of you will miss your freshman year selves.
Yet, I think it's important to recognize that life moves on for a reason.
We are not meant to be stagnant beings.
We are meant to be constantly learning more about ourselves, learning more about others, finding the capacities within ourselves to live a life full of greater love and compassion, stronger work ethic and determination. And in many cases, making all these things possible may mean saying "goodbye" to who we were a few months ago, or even who we feel we are in the present moment. And that's okay.
If anything, the end of the year has taught me to not be afraid to say goodbye.
As cliché as it sounds, beneath every goodbye, is a hello. So yes, I said "see you later" to my friends at school, I said goodbye to who I was freshman year. Yet with that, I say hello to my friends and family at home, hello to summer, hello to sunshine and the formation of better habits that will help me become a better version of myself every day.
I hope you all can find hello's in your goodbyes, too. Here's to three and a half months of seeing each day as a chance for our best selves to emerge.
Talk soon,
Sam
