There is a fear that sits, dark and insidious, within our time here in college. We meet it when we do poorer than expected on an assignment, declare our major or intended career, or when we recognize just how little time we have left here.
It is a fear that rises when we realize, despite what we’ve been told or desperately believe, that we might not be good enough. We might not be lucky enough. We can’t necessarily get what we want, what everyone expects of us, or what we expect of ourselves. We fear our inadequacies and failures – the things we try most to hide from others and ignore in ourselves.
We fear that these will end up being our best years of our life.
Even if you haven’t felt this way, or at least felt it in these terms, it’s easy to feel unbearably light about our time here at Willamette. Without the weighty certainty that comes from direct experience or complete self-assurance, we’ve all questioned at least a few of the choices that have caused us to end up where we are today. This time right before the end of the academic year is notoriously full of such introspective doubts.
Courage has always been acting in spite of fear, not the absence of it. So, as we embark onto the next chapter of our life, I can but offer my roommate’s timeless advice -“go big or go home.” Our actions in this life will always be uncertain, but yet we must act. All we can do is put effort into the people and ideas that are significant.
All we can do is hope that is enough. I honestly don’t believe that these will be the best years of our life, but they will be some of the easiest. Here we are given purpose, daily amenities, community and the permission to define our space and interests. But even in the most conducive of environments, we never figure it all out.
So, in the presence of such fear and such difficult calls to action, one has to be rigorous in pursuing – in meaningful ways – the meaning of the time left at Willamette and our time left in the world. I may not be able to answer what that meaning is for you, but it definitely doesn’t come from the places that culture tells us to look.
It seems that there is a sort of “younger sibling syndrome” affecting our generation. We take the outward forms of resistance and activism (read: festivals resplendent in tie-dye, self-medication, and music) without the vital understanding of what those expressions meant. Like when your younger sibling mimics what you do without knowing why, we mimic the actions of what we have idealized college to be. Both look equally silly.
To appropriate the symbols of past cultures and counter-cultures without standing for anything is to mistake form for substance. Finding meaning in this collegiate experience cannot be merely acting out a pre-established script from our idealized misconceptions.
So, rather than acquiescing to the ideas and ideals that aren’t our own, we have to find a way to act fully in spite of the fear that can so easily overtake us. These years are only a glorious prequel to a story that, ultimately, we have to write for ourselves. So go big, it’s all we can do.
Originally published in the Willamette Collegian.