Friday, May. 02, 2003 5:45 a.m.

proverbs 16:16

This semester has been a journey - that�s for sure! This entire year has been, by far, the most dynamic year of my college career. I think the things I�ve come to discover this year throughout the craziness are even more than during the semester I spent in California.

I think California was really the beginning...the thing that had to happen in order for me to be open enough to accept the things I�d experience and learn from this year. Last semester, it was mostly catching up with everyone else on life experiences, I guess. Alcohol, guys, social obligations, questions over my future, and the like. This semester, it was �the search�...for meaning, for happiness, for something to claim to believe in. Unlike my first two years of college, my questions and searching were not so hopeless and directionless this semester that I lived in a perpetual state of depression. Though I still became obsessed over my answerless questions, I seemed to be less afraid of them. My biggest problem for me (as I stated in a few journal entries) was how I should live my life. What did I want? If I wanted to be happy, maybe I should give up thinking too deeply. But if I wanted fufillment, wouldn�t I have to keep searching, no matter how painful it�d be?

It�s way too typical to claim that I�m coming to conclusions now, as I�m graduating from college. I�m sure this is not just a college thing...I�m sure my thinking days are not over. But I may have finally come to a place where my mind can settle down...it�s like an acceptance of things I do and do not know and a willingness to live with uncertainty. It�s a willingness to live, to embrace the mystery of life, willingly choosing not to explain things away.

My current philosophy on life:
Life is short. I don�t know what, if anything, comes after. I don�t have all the answers, but we might as well make the best out of this life. Like love, half the fun of life is the mystery to it. I�m sure both life and love can be explained in physical terms, but I am sick of destroying the mystery to it all. I want to live.

I can�t believe that I am saying this, because I�ve always thought that wanting wisdom was an arrogant holier-than-thou type of thing. But I�ve been thinking, and perhaps I do want it. I want to embrace life with full force, but I also want to be able to reflect on things in a practical way...I want to be realistic, and realistically, life needs to be fun!! I want to be honest, though sometimes that means I must be as stubbornly skeptical as I usually am, and sometimes that means I must be almost unrealistically optimistic. I want to be wise and know what answers are worth perusing and what answers are best left unknown.

It�s some funny kind of emotions I�m going though as college is concluding. I hated so much of these four years, but I think that, in the end, the appreciation for the things I�ve learned and discovered significantly outweigh the negative memories from here. I�m already feeling the bittersweet reminiscence, and I haven�t yet already left.

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