Beginnings are always hard. I’ve taken my fair share of literature classes throughout my scholastic career, and, without fail, each one of my teachers always comments that beginnings are hard. But beginnings are also important. They set the tone for the rest of the work, whether it be a speech, book or Odyssey article. Beginnings are hard, but beginnings are hopeful. Nick Carraway, perhaps my favorite fictional character, puts it best in the opening pages of his story, "The Great Gatsby" — "Reserving judgment is a matter of infinite hope."

Beginnings have no basis for judgment; their hope stretches to infinity.

The most poignant moment of my life was immediately after my parents and sister left me at college. I was alone now, on my own, meekly stepping into my solo life. And it was really hard. I found myself fighting back tears in an effort not to scare my roommate away on the first night. The beginning of college was really tough.

Yet, while the beginning was hard, it was hopeful. My first night alone was truly the first day of the rest of my life. This phrase is grossly overused, but never truer than in moments of great transition. And the “rest of my life” brought hope along with it. The empty room I walked into held promise that its barren walls had space to create memories. Infinite hope awaited beyond the initial emotional hardship.

I lived my freshman year, and by the end, I learned something else: endings are hard too. My life came full circle at the end of year one of college. On the final day, I found myself again fighting back tears. But rather than shedding tears at leaving home, they were shed in the wake of coming back. The empty room that once held so much hope and promise now cast a forlorn eye on my packed bags, lamenting the looming goodbye. Wallowing in my lonely, empty room, one of my favorite quotes of the year came back to me: “The road up and the road down is one and the same.” Heraclitus’ words ring true; indeed, seeming opposites often evoke the same response.

Perhaps that is because opposites are actually the same. The end of my childhood was the beginning of my college adventure. The end of freshman year is the beginning of an exciting summer with a job and time with family. The end of a chapter is inevitably the beginning of the next.

This leaves me with a question: Is everything, as the wise Solomon of the Bible said, a “chasing after the wind?” For if I am still fighting back tears in an empty room eight months after I arrived at college, how can life be anything more?

I don’t have an answer. We live in circles. Endings to beginnings; Mondays to Fridays; dawn to dusk. But if every ending is an inevitable beginning, perhaps we can take Nick Carraway’s words to heart and live in an “infinite hope.” For in a cyclical life, hope of the next school year, the next chapter, the next life is all that we have.