In My Day...

Today seems to be the day to romanticize the past [and revile the present] in lab. As I walked by our second-year grad student at her lab desk, she stopped me to say that she just wasn't in the mood to do anything today, not work on her papers, not work on her presentations, not shop for furniture, and not even work on her computer. To put it simply, she's kind of in a funk. Not ten minutes later, one of our postdocs told me, "Chaya. Life just gets harder from here on out. I'm just telling you that right now. It just gets harder." As I told her, that's probably true. And as she herself admitted, there are also many good things that happen in adulthood, things that seemingly outweigh the difficulties. But to her, the difficulties still win out.

It is true that as we grow up and begin our careers and train for our professions, as we build relationships completely outside the realm of our lives with our parents and siblings, as we, effectively, develop our own personas, new and whole perceptions of who we are as people and how we fit into the world, our responsibilities grow. We take care of ourselves physically, financially, and in other ways: we do our own laundry, clean [or not clean] our apartments when and how we want, and take ourselves wherever we want to go [literally], instead of waiting for our parents to take us there. Yet with all this new responsibility comes so much privilege, so much power. Isn't it great to develop a stronger sense of yourself, to make deep and lasting friendships, to mold your opinions and beliefs and wash your own clothes and drive yourself wherever you want to go?

Why do we romanticize our pasts so much, anyway? Yes, life is hard now. There are always struggles. But wasn't life also hard three years ago, when I spent the entirety of my freshman year trying to figure out how to transition to college life, constantly sick because of the mold infestation in my dorm room, struggling with making friends and figuring out who I was? Weren't there responsibilities in high school, too, when I woke up at 5:45 (I can't believe I did that anymore) to get to school by 7:10, spent seven hours in school, drove home in a car without air-conditioning in Houston, and also had homework to keep up with?

I'm not saying that romanticizing the past is a bad thing. In fact, it's probably a great coping mechanism. If we don't pick out the best parts of our pasts to focus upon as we look back on different stages of our lives, we would probably have a pretty hard time moving forward, especially if we truly believe that things only get harder as we get older. Additionally, romanticizing the past is one way to help ourselves grieve the closings of different chapters in our lives. If I weren't convinced now, as I am, that South Asian Society (the club that has shaped my college career in deep, unalterable ways, the one I have loved for four years) is somehow "different" now than it was when I was a freshmansophomorejunior, then I would be devastated at the prospect of leaving it behind at the end of this semester. It helps to tell ourselves that things were better before, because doing so makes letting go easier.

But maybe we should go about all of this in the opposite direction. Rhapsodize about our futures instead of longing for our pasts. The truth is, the future is bright, and we have a lot to look forward to. Yes, we'll miss what we had before, but we'll also continue growing and moving and becoming the people we were always going to be, and that's a good thing, if you ask me.

Or maybe we should just forget about yesterday and tomorrow and figure out a way to love today for exactly what it is.