Guess who just got back today?

Well we've come to that point in the year where summer is so close you can smell it, and it is on this cloudy day atop Lewis Hall that my thoughts turn to the upcoming summer and of summers past. Growing up, I lived for the summer. Summer meant staying up late and sleeping even later, trips to the library with its distinctive smell that makes me so nostalgic. Summer was a time of friends coming over to play and swimming and hot days accompanied with warm nights. Even now, I still kind of live for the summer but more and more they are becoming bittersweet. I am slowly coming to realize the inevitable, that my summers are limited. After this year I really only have two summers left before I am faced with living in the real-world and that scares me...a lot. And so it is with this frightening epiphany in mind that I have chosen to reflect on summer and the summers of yore, and through this reflection have come to realize that I have been awarded the type of freedom that will never come again. To those who may be reading this and have many more summers to spare I would encourage you, wholeheartedly, to enjoy them, and live them to the fullest because growing up is scary. All my life I have been eager to be on my own, all the while my elders have been telling me to not wish my life away. I feel as though I haven't wished my life away, but rather have been afflicted with the same kind of naïve eagerness that affects all children.

We all want to be grown-ups because we feel as though we will have more freedom, but when we step out from the nest we realize just how good we have it, or rather, had it. This, however, is not meant to a lament, oh no, it is a wakeup call, perhaps more for me than for you, to quite simply live like we were dying. As much of a cliché as it is we should NEVER under any circumstances take our time on this planet for granted. We shouldn't spend our time mourning for what was, but rather face every day as an opportunity to be taken advantage of. To boldly face the new horizon and its bounty and realize that we have been shaped by the path that lay behind us. To those of you who are perhaps reading this and know me and my personality you are more than likely rolling your eyes at this point. You might be thinking to yourself "here goes Alec on one of his you-never-see-a-uhaul-behind-a-hearse-live-in-the-moment tangents" and to you I say, bingo. Whether or not you are tired of hearing me, I will continue to discuss this topic because it is one of the things I know to be an absolute truth. We need to take time to appreciate the now, because change happens hard and fast. One moment you are playing with one of your best friends and the nest minute he's talking about getting engaged. So this summer, I don't know what you will be doing but I know what I will be doing. I'll be letting those I care about know I realize that life goes fast, and that it's hard to make the good things last. I'm going to be preparing myself for the path that lay ahead and appreciating every step along the way. I'll be blasting "the boys are back in town" as I drive with my friends, late at night to Ichop and Bennys. And with one of these final tastes of sweet and unadulterated freedom, I'll be living.