An end-of-the-year party

I keep thinking back to an end-of-year, or rather end-of-the-decade, party I went to last Friday. My friend from middle school hosted this party and invited our friend group. While parents hung upstairs to socialize, we were able to hang out in the basement. It was amazing to catch up. 

I learned about the classes my friends are taking, their school newspaper, orchestra, their cross country experiences, and the other people in our grade. They asked me about boarding school and how it differed from my day school experience. We talked about new movies coming out and seamlessly transitioned to watch a funny SNL clip while nibbling on some delicious chocolate mousse.

What takes me by surprise every time I think back to that night is how easy it was to hang out with my old friends. In all honesty, before the party, I feared we wouldn’t get along like we used to since high school took each of us separate ways. Some left the friend group. Some new faces joined. Some left the school. Nonetheless, when we reconvened nothing held us back from socializing. The fluidity of our conversation almost made me question whether we’d ever been apart in the first place. 

Going to this party helped me realize that I always have a place amongst this group of friends regardless of how time has contorted my perception of our friendship. Most importantly, I’ve experienced the power of maintaining friendships and the potency of human connection. One of the difficult things about life is that it’s like a train. We hop off at a stop and we meet people there. However, it appears that once we hop onto the train to discover new adventures, we may never reconnect with those old friends again. 

I believe it requires a conscious effort to go back and find time to meet up with old friends. It’s like hopping onto a train to rendezvous at a new stop. Human connection is by far one of the hardest things to maintain due to the nature of a life’s path, but I’m grateful to be getting practice now. This only makes me wonder how much harder it will be post-college after we all find ourselves in different cities. But maybe that's just the nature of life. Nevertheless, I'm grateful to have been able to catch up with my old friends and to feel as if I belong even through the challenges of time and distance. Thank you.

2019

2019 is almost to a close. Every year flies by faster and the boundaries between years seem to bleed into the next. Years used to remain contained within itself, almost like the closing of a book. At New Year’s Eve, it would be time to store that book onto the bookshelf. It hasn’t felt that way this year. What happened last year remains constant in my present-day life; the book seems to have acquired new pages and grown longer. 

While winter is a cold time of year, I don’t actually despise it. I enjoy this time of year because of the festive lights which compromise the early darkness and I enjoy the smell of pumpkin spice at Starbucks. While the streets empty out earlier in the winter, people return home to warmly lit houses where they can be with their families. This time of year is also a time of reflection. 2019 didn’t feel like an entire year. It felt too fast. Everything fell into place quickly and changes were difficult to make. It was also a year where second-guessing repeatedly lead to mistakes. Nike’s motto “Just do it” would accurately describe the way I felt about my work ethic. 

I feel I matured this year. When I say “matured”, I don’t exclusively refer to having grown older, but rather I understand myself better. I believe there comes a time where everyone solidifies who they want to be and move away from different “phases” of childhood. There’s this saying that every teenager goes through the rebellious stage before they grow up. While I didn’t exactly go through a rebellious stage per say, the concept of exploring my identity involves venturing out onto a tightrope. I think this year, I’ve found myself walking off that tightrope onto solid ground. In discovering who I strive to be, I’ve grown more comfortable in my own skin as a byproduct. This new comfortability with myself is what I fluidly refer to as “matured”. 

This year, I began caring more about etiquette. It’s something I’ve never cared quite as much about until this year when I realized how etiquette is a sign of respect for oneself and others. I’ve become more mindful this year. 

Finally, I feel I’ve become a stronger writer this year not because I’m receiving more positive feedback on my essays but because I know what good writing looks like. Or rather…feels like.  The words and ideas of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, articulate so fluidly it’s as if Harari’s analysis is a revelation I’ve personally worked through. Clear writing speaks to the reader almost to a personal level. Harari left no room for misinterpretation of his ideas, which is how I feel I’ve been able to connect with them. This is something I hope to accomplish in my writing. 

So here I am. About to move onto a new decade at the age of 17. In all honesty, no matter how grand a moment this may feel, I do not think I will remember it 50 years from now. 2019 marks the end of the decade and therefore the end of many trends. Music tastes, style, and fashion will inherently change in the new decade. Whatever it may be, I cannot wait to see what 2020 brings. Cheers to the new decade.

Our greatest happiness

"Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits." -Thomas Jefferson

While one shouldn't need to actively pursue genuine happiness, happiness is no accident. 

When I've barely tasted the world

It occurred to me that I’ve barely tasted the world. In high school, I’ve found myself increasingly consumed in the life that’s right in front of me that sometimes I forget there’s a world and a life outside of what I’ve seen. 

My life, as it rightly should today, consists of classes, studying, working out, eating, and going to the occasional dance on a Saturday night.  In all honesty, this is what my life has consisted of for the past 17 years. I joined some girls in my dorm this past week and from the start of the conversation, I could sense just how much more of the world they had encountered. One girl, whom I enjoy talking to a lot, spoke of going to clubs in Hong Kong, going out with friends at midnight, and traveling around Italy by herself. She spoke of all the people she met, all the wild (and perhaps slightly rebellious) things she did, and her experiences. I have a low-quality poker face and I don’t think I hid my surprise well. 

Going to clubs? Going out at night? At home, I have never left my house after 10 PM. I swear. I’ve never even gone outside in the dark by myself. I’ve never been to a club. I’ve rarely spent a night not at my house or at school. I’ve never even traveled by myself. 

I do not feel like I’m missing out on anything, as I quite enjoy the predictability of my current lifestyle. It’s merely been enjoyable to consider all the things I haven’t done in my life yet, a break from the to-do list in front of me. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine a life where I don’t have to do homework or study. Perhaps it’s gotten so ingrained in my lifestyle that I can’t imagine what I would do if I didn’t have a pile of papers to write or history texts to read. I suppose this is what people refer to as the “high school bubble”. It is the years where students become so ingrained in work they forget another lifestyle and other things exist. 

In that same conversation, my friend also told me about how many more types of people exist in this world…more types than I can imagine. Boarding schools attract a certain type of student and sometimes we forget that other people exist in this world. I’ve become too familiar with the people I interact with on a daily basis that I find myself utterly clueless to the people my friend talks about. My friend tells me that, like all my limited experiences, I’ve already met a very limited number of people. Though Andover’s campus in unequivocally diverse, nothing compares to the level of diversity I’m bound to encounter when I enter the real world. 

In a way, I’m curious whether college will bring about more firsts. Perhaps one must wait until after school to truly experience another lifestyle and meet more types of people. Or perhaps I will never experience the glamour my friend describes in her independent adventures. Even though I sometimes feel as if I’ve met many kinds of people and experienced a lot of things, my friend warns me that I have much more to see. Another really important realization I’ve had is that due to my limited experiences, my perspective about many things is also quite narrow. Perhaps if I experience more, I will become more empathetic towards others. One thing I can almost guarantee through hearing my friend’s experiences is that movies aren’t totally inaccurate :)

17

Although I’m merely one day older, yesterday, I added an additional year to my age. I’m 17 now, a number that feels miles more grandiose than 16 for inexplicable reasons. My age falls on the upper end of high school and I’m one year from adulthood. Even though I near independence, I still sometimes feel like a twelve-year-old. It's when I see an actual 12-year old that I realize how far I’ve come. Sometimes I see middle schoolers socializing around a small table in Starbucks, sipping their drinks with their pinkies pointed towards the ceiling, a moment where I realize I’m actually 17. 17 straddles the middle ground between the middle school Starbucks refreshers and the adult parties with wine, leaving me curious about what this time really means.

What a wonder age is. It’s effortless and in a blink of an eye, I find myself more than halfway done with high school. I can’t wait to see what this year holds for me. Thank you to my parents and my friends who have made this past year so wonderful.