summer 2018: retrospection in motion

I am sitting on a plane to Colorado as I write this post. This is a plane that has departed after a long day of crying and saying goodbyes, after the most amazing three weeks of my life, after the last summer of my college career. Summer of 2018 has come and gone, coursing and meandering in a way that only comes after you've truly opened yourself to the experience of life. As I am typing this, my heart is unbearably heavy, because it is filled with gratitude, and love, and light, and wonder.

As a college student I have been told by nearly everyone that the internship I end up doing for the summer of my Junior year will pretty much determine the direction of my career. The natural assumption is that I would finally stop pursuing my beloved barely-above-minimum-wage research gigs and finally apply for an internship at a big tech company. It's time to get real now, Tammy. Time to start thinking about the future, your future. Of course, as you may have guessed, I did not follow this piece of well-meaning advice.

If we don't write it down then where does it go?

Not counting the Wordpress blog my dad had made me when I was in the second grade, I have never seriously taken the effort to document my life. After all, what is there to really write down? What is there to remember? What is there to leave behind?

You live; you experience; and when it's done it's supposed to just pass you by and you're supposed to gracefully accept the passage and transience of memory. Because that's how life is. Apparently.

Then I got older, not that old, but old enough for things to happen: for things to come and for things to go. You can make it a point to ask from where they come and to where they go, but the ultimate question comes in: why does it matter if they stay? Whether all the people and events who come into your life are by windfall, or serendipity, or as part of some Grand Plan, they come into your life with one sole purpose--and that is to change you.