Graduation

I feel like I'm getting stuck on lasts. This is the last time I'll ever hug that friend. The last time I'll sign an MCS yearbook...my last in-school brunch. I don't want to keep thinking, every time I do some normal or generic thing, that it's the last time I'll ever do it. I don't want to give a final speech or eat a closing dinner. I don't want to say goodbye.

Suddenly, every small thing I do, every person I shake hands with, every joke I laugh at, seems to hold a heavier weight. I'm burdened with the realization of the importance of every move I make, smile I crack or face I pull. Everything I do is a last. I will never do what I'm doing right now ever again. 

Throughout tonight, I felt weighted by this discovery. No inside joke or picture of a teacher as their younger, wilder self could incorporate the same lightness it had previously possessed. My mind flitted back to the fact that I would never again share a moment just like this. I felt I was losing something. 

Maybe I felt that I was losing friendships. That maybe keeping in touch with everyone wasn't going to be as easy as I thought. Or maybe I was afraid of losing the uniqueness I feel my graduating class exudes. Mostly, I think I was afraid of losing the moment. 

Moments fly by so fast you might not even see one pass you by. Think about the first time you ever ate cheesecake (or any other delectable dessert). Were you astounded? Amazed by its deliciousness? Probably not. But wouldn't you give anything to go back to the first time you ate that cheesecake, knowing that it would be the only time you would ever get to taste it as you'd never tasted it before? 

Tonight, as I mingled and laughed and stuffed my face, I kept watching the moments pass me by while I was unable to do anything but observe. A friend across from me at the table would laugh, and I would look up to the ceiling, watching her chuckle float up into the air, never to be seen or heard from again. I might have even tried to catch it once or twice. 

But by the end of my graduation dinner tonight, I realized something. It wasn't just this day that was a last. It was every day. Every day we experience "lasts." Every day we experience a completely different set of challenges, successes and social drama. No snowflake is exactly alike, and neither is any day, hour, minute or second. 

But every last is also a first. Every time you experience something, you are experiencing it for the last time. Because there will never be another time when you are in the exact same place, in the exact same time, doing the exact same things with the exact same people. But because of this, every time you experience something, you are experiencing something for the first time. 

Imagine that. 

Go back to the cheesecake example. Don't you yearn for the day when you could taste cheesecake for the first time again? Can't you almost imagine how delighted your tastebuds would feel if they knew fully well they would never taste cheesecake like this again? 

Well, now imagine everything you do, everything you say, is like eating cheesecake for the first time. Think of how extraordinary that is. Everything you experience is totally unique to you, and doesn't exist anywhere else. 

The only way you can truly enjoy something, and I mean enjoy a moment through and through, is if you are fully aware that it is the first (and last) time you will ever experience it. And that's what I learned tonight.