First Week Back

Mistakes, obviously, show us what needs improving. Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on? -Peter McWilliams

I have spent alot of time working toward fixing my mistakes as of late, mistakes I have made with my educational career, mistakes I have made with my family and friends, mistakes I have made understanding myself. I am not sure that my recent journey has shown me what I need to work on, but what I need to work towards, and that is happiness. Without happiness what are we as humans? I suppose I would even venture to say that our eternal drive toward happiness is what makes us human. Most people spend their whole lives trying to find happiness, through personal gain with assets, family, a search for the "eternal truths, I think I am blessed to have found what most of us consider happiness early in life. When I left high school, I honestly thought I had happiness, I might have had glimpses of happiness, but nothing compared to what I have found as of late. When I started this whole college experience, I thought I knew what I wanted, to be one of the premier minds in the science field, and for a while I was 100% sure that is where I wanted to be and was in fact headed. But whatever it was be it divine intervention, or my sheer laziness, I was pushed away from all of that. At the end of that year I still had glimpses of happiness, through my new friends at college, and a new found respect for what my parents had been saying to me when I was in high school, but I began to notice something was wrong, I wasn't as happy as I thought I was. I looked at myself when in those science classes and felt that it was wrong, or at least not right. The only thing I found to be fulfilling at all was my Philosophy 010 class. The material seemed to seep into my mind and remain restless, constantly moving, which was invigorating. Then sophomore year rolled around and I was intent on maintaining what I had found the previous year, while searching for more happiness. I had a feeling that this philosophy I had taken in the spring was something I wanted to explore, but was unsure where it would take me, so I made an attempt at business, even though it was a half-hearted one. Many aspects of my life during that fall improved, including my social life, and even my understanding where my parents were coming from, but I still felt restless with my academics. Then over Christmas of this past year, I bought into the philosophy, and jumped into it head first. Once I did this, everything began to improve, my outlook on things in life, my other subjects of study, and most of all I finally bought into the idea that I need to find something I love to do every day to be truly happy.

These failures in my academics gave me a proper view of what I needed to work on, and that was finding what I need to be happy, I just wish that the good that has come out of this outweighed the sadness that has come out of my falling behind. All the people that I have come to love and see as my family have all moved on from me and I am not that far behind, but it is still hard to deal with the day to day grind without their support. I understand they are all a phone call away and most would drop everything if something big happened and I needed one of them, but the little things, just being able to have that five minute chat is what I need, I can handle the big things, it is the little social interactions that I need. Perhaps I am just attempting to hold onto the perfect happiness I found toward the end of the spring semester. I understand that we will be together again very shortly, but it will never be the same as it was, and maybe that is why I am longing for what I once had.

Not all change is bad, but I suppose it isn't the change that I am having difficulty with, it is the inevitable adjustment that scares me, but I think I will make it. I just have to see that light at the end of the tunnel, and a restoration of the true happiness I have experienced.

Until we meet again
-The Benz