The Problem of the Post-Grad

I have been trying to take up journaling again. The following was an earlier entry.

I'm worried that this is as good as it gets.

At some point you can't go back and I think that is what bothers me the most. I can't go back to save the boy. I can't go back to tell myself to just go home before I get into a bigger mess. I can't go back to relive the days friendship was strongest in order to revel in it. I can't go back to repeat each moment of glory and wonder and awe. 

It is a two-facet phenomena, in which I am first unable to alter the things I would prefer not to have happened and in which I am unable to hold to the moments which were so good I desire to experience them continually.

It is truly life-or-death tragic and it is nostalgic and melancholic tragic.

The good thing about Heaven is that the former will no longer matter and the latter will be forever. The bad thing about Hell—which I most fear—is the former will be my self-inflicted torture and the latter will be nevermore.

I'm worried that this is as good as it gets. And that isn't good enough.

This transitory phase I am experiencing post-university is stranger and more unsettling than the transitory phase I experienced going to university. It seems counter-intuitive: after school I am wiser, I have a better understanding of myself, I have friends I can rely upon, I have a miraculous gift in the Catholic Church. Yet it is as if a great understanding is evading me. College is supposed to give you the tools to face the world, but I don't think college taught me how to apply for jobs for which I am over-qualified or what to do when my major of study is no longer exhilarating or how to trust people, how to trust yourself, when they say it all works out.

I don't think this issue is particular to myself. Friends with whom I graduated seem to be going along the road of life as certainly as I. But this isn't like the Life board game. I haven't played it to know what curves life is going to throw at me. It isn't even a problem that life may will be difficult; it is that I don't know when. I don't know when I should slow down and savor the moment or when to exit the room as quickly as possible because one wrong stance or word or friendship that buds in the next ten seconds could throw my life off the tracks for the next ten years.

Would anyone believe me if I said that wasn't dramatic?

So what's the problem with post-grad? It's the same problem faced by anyone who looks up from his mundane routine to face questions of existence and purpose. Life is big with infinite variables and, as exciting as life can and should be, it is also terrifying and confusing and tragic. I think we need to acknowledge the scary parts of life more, and remind ourselves that it is natural to be concerned. The thing which saves us from the downward spiral is an ascension—whether that manifests itself in friendship or art or laughter or God (Who of course provides all three).

The need for this ascension is probably why I buy wine and have dance parties (both at the simultaneously proper and unconventional times).

Dance party on, my friends. We'll make it.