It's amazing how a single song can become the theme for a year. As I was moving to Boulder, I discovered that the indie rock band X Ambassadors had released a new album, and I had completely missed it. Considering it was an 11 hour drive to Boulder from Sioux Falls, I figured that it would be the perfect opportunity to give the album a listen. As I sat in the car laden with my material life up to that point, listening to one of my favorite bands, I enjoyed the album. However, I found one of the songs stuck with me. The song Renegades has become one of my favorite ever, and I listened to it whenever I would put my earbuds in to bike across campus, or head to dinner. It really began to be the theme song for the first part of my freshman year. I hated it.
See, I love the song. But the beginning of my freshman year actually kinda sucked. Since I was moving to a new school, in a new state, that was larger than any city I had ever lived in. I was, to put it simply, adrift. I knew where I needed to be, what lectures I needed to attend before the academic year started, and my class schedule, but I had no idea where any buildings were in context to each other.
So I would plug my headphones in, blast Renegades on repeat, and bike around campus until I found the building I was looking for. Soon enough, I could find my way around campus, but I was still lost: I hadn't found a close group of friends. Sure, I had met people from my dorm, and I knew most of the guys on my floor, but I hadn't really found a group that I really clicked with.
Subconsciously, I began to associate Renegades with feeling lonely. It got to the point that I wouldn't even listen to it anymore, skipping it when the album played. Ironically, Renegades was playing when I was invited to play pool on the dorm's pool table by one of my floor neighbors. Having nothing better to do, I acquiesced, and earbuds still in, headed up to the pool room. And I am so incredibly glad I walked up there that night.
It was in that pool room that I met some of my best friends in the world. It was to that song that I found the group that I would fit in with, eat dinner with, party with, go on spring break with, and eventually, hopefully, move in with. Soon enough, Renegades was back in my regular line up, being blasted in the car, sung in the shower, and rocked to on bike rides across campus. This time, however, there was no twinge of sadness in my heart when it came on. It carried no stigma of loneliness anymore.
Last week, as I was driving to Best Buy, Renegades came up when I set Spotify to shuffle my downloaded albums. And, to my surprise, my eyes welled up. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I had become verklempt like that. Before I knew it, I was seeing my friends in my mind's eye. Our group, laughing at a table at dinner; my friends, playing car games on our spring break road trip; the look on their faces when someone would snipe a pool ball in, far surpassing our expectations. My incredible girlfriend's laugh, and the smile she wore, as she took in my terrible dance moves. All of these images flooded my mine in an instant. And then, poof, they were gone. I was still driving. What they left, however, was a feeling. A feeling of hope. I am hopeful because I know that these memories are just from ten months of knowing each other. We still have another three years to make even more.
Thank you, X Ambassadors, for creating a song that I will forever associate with memories from the best year of my life.
