Anirudh A.
If you’re reading this, be present because you’re already where you want to be, open your eyes to it.
The past, it’s like looking at a painting you know all too well. But every time you revisit it, there’s something different, a little smudge of change here and there, a different stroke completely altering the blend of color. Reminders of warm fuzzy memories or experiences you might not look back at. Things that you wish you could, oh so get back, so close yet so far, things that you can almost grasp, things you want to hold onto, you replay those moments over and over. Every second in retrospect reveals something so profoundly different about you. But eventually it becomes hazy, like a fog tinted window, you can see it, but not vividly anymore. You remember the details, in words, but not the way you felt. Because you fear that once you feel that way again, you’d never want to move forward, because that one part of your life that you held so dearly close, is no longer there anymore.
“I wish I could chang- , I wish I could just go ba-”, “ I wish I had reached out to that friend, I wish I could have said more, said things differently, said the things that I truly felt”. You know that feeling all too well. However, the reason you also miss those moments so much, is because they came to an end.
Those were my exact feelings in my heart when two people who I had known back in high school ended up taking their own life. Why? Because they never felt that they mattered, that the world around them would have been a better place without them. No one accepts them for who they are, or at least they believed so. It made my throat dry when I uttered the sentence “I wish I would’ve tried to know how they were feeling”. The questions are never ending, because you can never really tell what goes on, in someone’s mind. That’s the problem with anything that debilitates your mind; it festers for years. Small little things all add up, you feel like you don’t fit in, you’re not a part of something. The way you think, feel, act, express. Do these even matter? You feel that you’re alive, only because you don’t want to die.
When I first came to Syracuse, I felt unheard, I felt that it was difficult to fit in, because I was from a different place, because I looked different, that I didn’t matter. I felt as though I was not meant to be here, I was just someone who landed up here, because I was paying tuition fees. It was this feeling of absolute apathy coupled with trouble in forming meaningful connections or relationships, all owing to my own sense of insecurities and past experiences creeping into my life.
I had closed my eyes to the good, and only paid attention to the negative. My mind would wander, constantly engaged in this inner conflict from which I didn’t see any reprieve or peace. Until eventually, I found someone, who made me open my eyes, to the good here. Made me learn about myself, about valuing myself, making me realize how much impact I could have on any place and on any person. It’s always just one person, only one, that makes you realize how much importance your life holds in this world and how distinct as well as unique you are as a person. No matter how many flaws you see in yourself, they see past them, only seeing the best of you. No matter how mistakes you make, they only see how true your intentions were. They see you for who you are and accept you for that.
Sonder, that’s the word used to describe each and every person, out of the countless millions of lives on this planet, going through their own unique experience, that only they will be able to truly feel in its entirety.
Every street’s filled with someone’s firsts, first time downing a whole can of fourloko, going through their first year of college, first time finding someone that they love, first job, first time entering college. Or their last time seeing the person they loved and had to let go of, last time they got to go with their friends and run through the streets after a fun night out. You never even realize when it’s your last time, you only see it for what it was in retrospect. Like finding that one photo you don’t remember taking, years later in a box in your attic. It's not that you feel morose that these things came to an end. You remember every single moment, hold it close to your heart, it envelopes you like the warmth of a blanket on a cold snowy day. Healing you with every second it stays close to you.
When people talk about things ending with certain people, they always start sentences with “when you leave, when you disappear”. I always felt that the “you” being talked about here is not the other person. But rather you, yourself, when “you” disappear from anywhere or from the life of anyone that you felt very close to. You might be gone, but what stays is a part of you, with them, and of them, with you. Captured still in time, it’ll be there forever, not just in your mind, but also in the world around you. You might not see them physically but those memories, those moments they’re most definitely there. Maybe that’s why people write their names on places, as a reminder that they were once there. That’s the human experience, without you feeling the pain of letting go, of leaving something behind, something losing its permanence, you’ll never have something in your past that you can look fondly at; it only holds value because you can’t keep it with you forever.
So, whenever, you go out to take a breather; just look at how much you miss out on when you’re so busy with your day, so busy worrying about your problems, how they eat away at your mind. Stopping you from experiencing the world, stopping you from being present. Stopping you from realizing how beautiful life really is, that you now, can perceive it in this way. That you really are someone who was given this gift and experience to see through your own two eyes.
Say the things that you want to say, tell someone how much you want them to be in your life, tell them the things that you’ve kept locked inside, don’t let anything be unsaid, give a compliment to a stranger who you see on the street, laugh till your face hurts, do things that make you scared, things that you’ve always put away, reach out to others and ask them how their day went, start that one little passion project you never got started on, don’t wait until time takes it course, be happy simply because you’ve been given a life to experience. All I ask of you is to just, not sit down and dwell on the past or the future. Simply do. Live by doing
“I really want to inspire people through what I do” is what I wrote at the back of my notebook. While sitting and taking notes in my statistics class. I realized that, there’s so many people who feel unheard, feel like they simply will never fit in. Maybe it’s because of how they look, where they’re from or their thoughts. I want to tell them, as someone who’s weathered the tempestuous storm.
There’s something special at the end of this journey, you may not exactly get to where you want to be but maybe, just maybe, the aim was never the destination, maybe you should enjoy the little detours to the fullest, because that's where you’ll find things more important than what you want.
If you’re reading this, be present because you’re already where you want to be, open your eyes to it.
Anirudh A., Syracuse University
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