We Were Born to Overcome

This has been the worst week of my first year of college.

But it's okay. It's going to be okay.

I know this because the worst week of my first year of college could be so much worse. I got to experience Holi Moli. I'm not sure how religiously accurate it was, but it was fun. Thousands of UNC students, dressed in old white clothing on a huge white tarp, gather in Polk Place and throw vibrantly colored pigment at each other until everyone is just a blob of color. The pictures reveal the multicolored cloud of dust hovering about the cheering crowd. An uninformed viewer might think were extremely dedicated hippies, even tye dying our smoke.

The Holi festival, a Hindu celebration, is supposed to celebrate the coming of Spring. Rebirth. While I was tossing paint manically at my friends, this message seemed distant, just an excuse to defy the long-ingrained instinct not to make stains.

However, as I stood in the already-stained-purple shower, watching the water run off my skin in little rainbow rivers and leaving me squeaky clean and new, I understood. Spring blooms everywhere, pink and purple and green coloring the campus, even the dusty yellow pollen coating everything brightens up the place. Even after the spring showers have washed away all the evidence of spring's coming, the hope is left. The birds chirping in the rain, the sweet smell of May mornings, the sparkling morning dew.

I'll admit a few tears might've mixed into the mess of soap, water, and paint as I stood in the shower evaluating my life. But it's okay because next spring, as I stand in the middle of the colorful crowd at Holi Moli, this week won't matter anymore. The grades will have faded into the background; the sting of inconvenience of being temporary homeless and temporary extraneous will have dulled into a vague, old ache; the midterms will be long-forgotten. It just won't matter. I'll wash myself anew in the shower, and it'll be another new beginning.

"And we carry on
When our lives come undone
We carry on
Cause there's promise in the morning sun
We carry on
As the dark surrenders to the dawn
We were born to overcome
We carry on."