Here I am, God.. how long? 13 years later? On the same bench, writing. Not much has changed here. The same campus, dorms, walkways. Only new students starting their studies with a recoil in their step and smiles on their faces. God they look young. Did I look this young back then? What does “young” even mean? Is it a state of lightness that reflects on one’s features? Like a blank canvas? Or is it less facial hair? Maybe a lack of pores and wrinkles?
Everything feels the same, but I have changed a lot, but also have not changed much. Life feels less light, but so very meaningful because of my beautiful wife. My 20-year-old self would be proud of me, albeit surprised of my dwindling confidence, and my slow ability to mentally adapt to larger levels of responsibility and to the mundanity of the professional working life. The bills, the appointments, the meetings, the constant impostor syndrome, anxiety and stress to perform at work and on all fronts in my life running in the back burners of my brain. I thought I’m capable of everything if I put my head into it. Yet I find myself struggling through adult life, but somehow managing and achieving things I have always wished I’d achieve. Alhamdulillah.
My 20-year-old self, I’m struggling to know which parts of him have stayed with me and which have gone away, and if any of him should stay at all. Should I let him go? Should I grieve him? Did I have time to grieve him?
Does keeping him and his dreams and high-headed idealism alive hold me back in the past and keep me disappointed? Or does he remind me that no matter how old and responsible I become there is always a spark in life to hold on to? How do I hold on to that spark? Why is this spark the brightest when we’re in the university phase? Is it the ease of making friends? The novelty of it all? The curiosity and will to learn, explore and grow as people? Does this all get crushed by the modern work life under capitalism? By the alienation it creates and the little time and energy it leaves for a whimsical, curious existence and the nurturing of community? The realisation that we’re not working for the benefit of humanity like we were told, but to line up the pockets of a select few while the world burns? How to keep this lightness alive after all what we figured out about the world we live in and the state of dissonance it created? After all the news we witnessed? With all the responsibilities that grow with us?
I guess this article, unlike the ones my younger self wrote, contains more open questions than answers and insights. I thought I had it all figured out back then, but now I’m sure that I don’t. I hope to go to Debrecen one more time, who knows how many years later, with answers to these questions, or at least some of them, and a lighter, braver heart that is willing to take on life with more courage and confidence. My younger self had a light heart because of a beautiful, highly spiritual idealistic naïvety and romanticism. I want my older self to have the same, but due to wisdom. Between those two is a valley of despair, cynicism, resentment, empty nostalgia and escapism that plagues adult life that I don’t want to fall into.
