I know it's silly, you've probably been in the world for at least eighteen years if you're reading this, but somehow all of it does feel new and shiny. We're adults now. We're officially living on our own, and for most of us, that opens up a whole new world of firsts.
It means doing our own laundry (sigh), drinking soda with every meal, and deciding how late to stay out at night.
It means reminding ourselves to do the things our mothers used to press us about and maybe arguing with that imaginary voice in our head before conceding and doing what we know we should.
The other day I met my friend outside her dorm to go "shopping." When she met me at the door, I discovered that we were, in fact, food shopping, which seemed to make her deliriously happy. I think I was giving her the "you have three heads right now" look because food shopping has always seemed more like a chore to me. I'll admit though, when we got to that grocery store, we had a great time geeking out over the copious variety of ramen noodles, and comparing the various prices of all well-known diabetes-inducing snacks. I left with two bags of my own, and I hadn't planned on buying anything.
That's the inevitability of it though, we might not understand it, or even completely see it yet, but we are morphing into our parents. I'm not saying that we are picking up our mother and father's little idioms and idiosyncrasies, I'm saying that we are becoming our own parents.
We look after ourselves now. Who else is going to do it? No one.
These are the most wonderfully terrifying and terribly confusing years of our lives.
I was walking to class alone yesterday - you know, earbuds in, music blasting - and I'm the kind of person who walks staring at their feet, but I lifted my head and looked up at the sky, and - BAM - the seatbelt was off. It was like the world swallowed me whole, and everything was so much farther apart and all the buildings were looming larger than life itself around me.
I felt like my own person, like a real, palpable, tangible being, and yet, like I could touch the sky if I just reached up - which obviously I couldn't. I was walking aimlessly but I was walking with an aim.
I might still not know where I'm going; but I am becoming my own best confidant, my own guardian, my own protector, even my own adversary. I am the architect of my life now. We are all builders, inventors, draftsmen. We are all searching, aimed at something, but we will never find anything if our eyes are forever facing down.
We must open ourselves to this great big world. We must welcome it. I know that it can be terrifyingly large and overwhelming, but when we spend our whole lives looking at our feet, it passes us by completely, and how could we possibly discover ourselves without discovering first?
