Apparently, I’ve graduated. Yessiree. I’m student status no more, and if I wanted, never will be. Think about it, a life of bumming around the house with nothing to worry about but too much food, too much sleep, and the next form of passive entertainment to ingest. Well, at least until mom and dad, in deep love and concern for my future, and theirs, kicks me out of the house and tells me to go get a job, or at least a life. But that wouldn’t be until years. Ah, unemployment, here I come!
So how does it feel like, graduating? Bittersweet, I guess. The joy of finally accomplishing one part of your life is always followed by that uncertainty of facing the next, whether or not you’re ready to move on, whether you even like to move on. What bothers me the most though is the thought that I didn’t get the most out of my previous life, too many parties unattended, too many lessons not learned, roads not taken, all those wasted opportunities. I remember yesterday, in the graduation ceremony, I was watching all these people get awarded and all, and I was thinking, hey, I could also deserve that. If I worked on it, made the right decisions, I might have gotten myself an award too. I could have given mom and dad the gratitude that they really deserve. I kept remembering all those times I played when I should’ve worked, and worked when I should’ve played, stayed at home when I should’ve been out there experiencing more out of life. I look at what I sacrificed and the things that I bargained for, and I can’t help but have that all too familiar nostalgia that feels so much like regret. What if, you know?
But life moves on, whether you want it to or not. I think there’s a saying somewhere that says having regrets make life more miserable as it is. So, I won’t. But, if I would regret, I would be regretting about all those times I spent mulling over piles of what-if’s, of considering the things in the past, of regretting. In the end, I guess I could never change history no matter how much I think about it. What I could do something about though is the future, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to spend it regretting over today. A life on regrets is not living at all. So from now on, I’d stop mulling and go out there and do something with what’s left of my life. I’ll be reckless. I’ll make a lot of mistakes. I may even end up exactly where I am now. But, by all that is holy, I’ll be out there living. In the end, I guess it’s not what we do that makes life such a pain to think about, it’s how we did it that really does the cake. If you’re doing something full of uncertainties, full of doubt, full of longing for some other life, then for the love of self, stop doing it, or at least do it in another way. I want to look back and see a life enjoyed, if not lived to the fullest. I may not accomplish much, but at least I’ll leave this world grinning.
I guess bumming around the house will have to wait.
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march 28, 2006 – graduation day
