I find it amazing how a few triggers can bring back a flood of memories and feelings. They swarm you with remembrances of times gone by and hopes and dreams forgotten. It is astounding how they can seem so innocent by themselves, but combined they can bring about powerful feelings and emotions.

I have had two of these triggers in the past few days that made me think of another time in my life. The first trigger was a film. I took in Clerks II this weekend. If you are a Kevin Smith fan, you will enjoy it. It has plenty of his dick and fart jokes, as he likes to say. It also has a great deal of heart, in my opinion. One line that stuck with me was something Randal said. As he was talking with Dante about life, and I must paraphrase here since I have only seen the film once, Randal says ‘I think life left us behind a long time ago.” I thought this was a very poignant line and it stuck with me long after the film. I know myself, and I am sure more than a few others my age, also feel this way. Sometimes it seems as though we have been sucked into the machine that, while we may not have raged against, we certainly distained and looked upon with dread and disgust. And suddenly, before we even knew it, we found ourselves grinding the gears to said machine. It felt as though our ideas of what the world should be and could be were discarded and without fanfare or struggle we were easily assimilated into the machine.

The other was just something funny a friend from college sent me. It was innocuous, one of those you know you went to type of lists with a variety of things listed that you could only associate with if you went to that particular school. I found it quite funny, and it brought back good memories and put a smile on my face. I remembered some fun times at the locations, the atmosphere, the time I spent there, the friends I met and lost to time and distance and the ones that I have kept through thick and thin and to changes in our lives. It made me feel good, warm and nostalgic. But after reading it, and in the best net tradition forwarding it to others I went to school with, something else hit me. I miss that time a lot more than I ever thought I would.

I know they say that college is the best 4, or 5 or 6, years of your life. At the time I railed against such sayings. Even now I rail against it. I refuse to believe that my life peaked before I really got a chance to live it. And I still believe the best times are still ahead. As I grow older and gain wisdom and experience, I find myself enjoying things more, cherishing moments more and willing to try things that I never thought possible. I look forward to more experiences, adventures and friendships as time goes on and hope to enjoy as much that this world has to offer as I travel down the road of life.

But college had something that I now realize I can never get back. And it is not so much the collegiate experience itself, but more along the lines of that time in life. A time when you are young and carefree, and you look upon the world with fresh eyes. You see the possibilities of not only what your life can be, but of what the world can be as well. You think that you can make things better, change the world and make a difference. You are beginning to see what it is like to live on your own and create a life for yourself. Everything is new and fresh and each experience is eye opening, fascinating and exciting. You tentatively leave the safety and comfort of home for the very first time, walking on legs that feel newborn, into the unknown. You meet people that you had never thought you would meet, and learn things that evoke wonder and amazement, and I am not even speaking of the class work. I am speaking of learning about the world from others whose experiences differ from yours in ways you may never have thought possible. You begin to learn and experiment with ideas, dreams and socialization. It is a time when we try new things and turn them from scary and fraught ridden to an almost everyday thing, as familiar and comfortable as an old pair of jeans. As you navigate through four years of learning, growing and experiencing, you begin to build a foundation for your life and who you want to be. By the end of your time in school, you cannot wait to get out and try everything you learned in the real world. You are ready to start your life, to grab at the brass ring, to change the world. Seemingly ready for what life will throw at you, you say goodbye to the haven of academia, the friends and the familiarity to take on the world. It is only then that we realize it is not all it is cracked up to be.

It is only when we get out into the real world, when we start making our way that we learn the real truth about life that was never taught in any class. Life is a struggle, physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally. It is hard to establish yourself in the world, to get a toehold and a grip and hold on to a world bucking to throw you to the gutter like so many others who came before you with big dreams and tons of naiveté. The challenge mentally of holding on to what you want to do and keeping your dreams while doing what you need to survive. This is something that can tear you apart not only mentally, but spiritually and emotionally. I myself have struggled with this since graduation, and still do to this day. I fear I may struggle with it until I pass from this mortal coil.

You find that life is nothing but a series of compromises, to yourself, your dreams, to others, to your desires and to your wishes and hopes for the better life and a better world. One that while preparing for life, you once thought was just a few steps ahead and all you needed to do was jump to grab it. You find out painfully that they may always be a few steps ahead, no matter how hard you try and strive for it. These compromises roll onto you like the tide, coming one after another and slowly dulling those fresh and wondrous eyes you once looked upon the world with into empty vessels. They leave them stripped bare, looking upon a world that appears as if there is no hope left for anything better for anyone, let alone you. They leave those newborn legs you once trotted into the world on broken and bruised, shuffling from one meaningless task to another, all seemingly pointless yet needing to be done, because that came with one of the compromises. With the growing wisdom that comes with age and experience also comes increased cynicism and skepticism, leaving their marks on your mental and emotional landscape. You find yourself frustrated that it keeps taking longer and longer to achieve anything, let alone the important things for which you want and hope. The frustration also rears its head in your attempts to grow, to learn or to become something more. Mostly you become frustrated because the dreams and hopes you once held cherished in your heart are not happening despite your best efforts. And with a growing sadness and resignation, you find they are also disappearing, becoming marginalized or replaced by much smaller and minimal dreams and hopes. This frustration leads to disappointment, diminishing hope, apathy and emptiness. With the world hammering you from all sides with the realities of life you never expected, the sadness of the state of affairs across the globe, the seemingly bottomless reserves of hate and anger that flow through everything and the almost non-existent happiness in most people and endeavors, hope leaves you. Surrounded by those that seem to focus on things that mean little in the macrocosm, bent on destruction of others for petty reasons, reveling in ridiculous personal vendettas; your eyes close to the world around you. Watching how corporations, countries and the world treat individuals and the disenfranchised, your dreams of something better implode. You find yourself with the dreams dashed, the wonder gone, the eyes dulled and the feelings of something better fleeting and vanishing. You make one more compromise to hold onto whatever feelings you can get back, if only to briefly touch that nexus that once seemed to envelope you. And the next thing you know, you have been trudging in the machine for 10 years and you wonder to yourself, how did I get here, how do I get out, and is there any hope left for something better.

I have no idea to those questions. I am struggling to find an answer myself. All I know is those to triggers really impacted hard on my psyche. I miss those times, as I mentioned before, much more than I ever thought I would. I miss the feeling of something new and fresh. I miss the wonder of looking upon things for the first time. I miss meeting new friends in droves, all with the same hopeful optimism as myself. I miss the carefree and wildness of the time, of setting your own schedule, breaking the bonds of structure and parental control and screaming wild into the world. I miss flying about as though your hair was on fire in an attempt to try everything, see everything and do everything. I miss the feelings of being unfettered and free, without the responsibilities of rent and car payments and a 9-5 job and all of the other responsibilities that seem to creep into our lives at an ever increasing pace the older we get. The feelings of freedom, wonder, nervousness, invincibility and of being scared and thrilled by almost everything that invariably fade and dull over time due to experience and growth. I miss all of those feelings that course through us at that age. I miss learning about what I like, dislike, care about, what is important, what drives me and all the things about those I care about for the first time. I miss the ideas of changing the world, grabbing it by the tail and swinging as hard as I can. I miss the hope that the world can be made better, that evil in all forms can be overcome and defeated, that good will triumph over said evil, that there is a line between good and evil and that those who seek to do good will be trumpeted and those who seek evil will be vanquished. I miss the optimism and the lack of cynicism. I miss the naiveté of and surety of youth. Most of all, I miss the dreams. I miss the dream that something great and wonderful was in store for us, and it was just around the corner and all we had to do was go and get it. We were smart enough, strong enough, determined enough and dedicated enough that all we had to do was charge ahead, and the wondrous world would come to us, and we would meet it head on and both would be better for it. I miss the dream that you could change the world one person at a time and make things better for all. I miss the dreams, wonder and hope. I do not want to go back and relive those times; the past is there for a reason, as is the future. But I would give almost anything to get the freedom back, to feel hope again, to be filled again with wonder, to look upon the world once more with fresh eyes and feel like I can not only dream of something greater, but make it come true.