Brevity is Beauty

Usually at a semester's end, I feel nostalgic or at least a little sad that a certain set of experiences, faces, and the overall feeling that things will never be just as they are again. All my life, I've been a self-professed hater of change.

But as the countdown on my dorm room door ticks down to zero and I get closer and closer to home, I don't really feel that ache for each "last" like before. It was very anti-climatic as my professor in my last lecture clicked off his microphone for the very last time. His preceding lecture was oh so relevant to the thoughts already drifting around in my head.

Maybe it's the completely different environment I'm in, or the difficulty of becoming attached to a two hundred person lecture, or a sign of growing into adulthood.

Or maybe it's what my professor was talking about today before he sent us off into the world, having departed a semester's worth of wisdom onto half-comprehending vessels with notebooks and Macbooks. The lecture was about human values--it is natural to think we value what is permanent. Immortality is appealing and death is terrifying. We want to choose the longer lasting everything. Antiques are more valuable than new furniture; older friends are better friends.

My professor challenged this assertion. We also value what is rare, scarce, and unique. What is more scarce than time? It is the ultimate example of something important in limited numbers. And things that are abundant are just not as valuable. We often the cite the shortest, smallest, more unique moments as the best ones: sunsets and rainbows and snow falls, or those moments of uncontrollable laughter, or the agonizingly joyful moments at the top of a rollercoaster. These things are valuable because we cannot experience them whenever we want for however long we want. Their value is derived from their rarity and brevity.

By that logic, I shouldn't grieve for the loss of this snapshot in my life, my first semester in college. I should be glad that it feels so short because if it were eternal, it would also be mundane as breathing and commercials and whatever else is ubiquitous and inconsequential.

I can feel myself shifting from my old point of view, hanging onto to everything and mourning for every small loss, to something new and better. I am grateful for change, for the temporary nature of my existence. Without it, nothing would seem quite so good.