Thought Overflow

I’ve just been thinking about why people make a big deal about some of the things in their lives…almae matres being the prime focus of my thoughts, to be more accurate. I’ve heard stories about the pride people take in being in XLRI. I’ve heard about alumni who return to campus, and apparently some of them just like to sit in the JLT (the sprawling lawns) and reminisce with tears in their eyes.

I miss my school a lot. I loved school. I loved it because I loved the friends I made. I’m still in touch with many of them, and I hope we’ll be friends forever. During Inter, I made good friends, but none of whom really stuck. I still look upon my Intermediate Education years with fondness. If you asked me now, I’d say that those were good times, even though I think that if I really dwell on it, there’s not much that I could come up with about those days that was spectacular. I miss my college, and I’m sure that if I go back there now (or in a few more months, perhaps), I’ll end up feeling nostalgic. What did I love about college? I had one or two very close friends, and I’m not likely to ever forget them. College itself was nothing great. I didn’t do anything super special…I didn’t get a girlfriend in college, I didn’t play on the football team…nothing, no major achievements of any kind. Still, I liked it. One thing, of course, is that I absolutely loved the time spent commuting to and from college. For about three hours a day, I had time to listen to music and not have to do anything else. But I’ve already written about that a million times. Except for these things, I cannot really come up with anything special about college. Why, then, do I look upon it so fondly?

I think that is what life is all about. When you do something everyday for a long time, it becomes a part of your schedule. It becomes a part of your life, everyday. As long as it’s not something you detest, it ends up “growing on you”, to borrow a phrase. And then, one fine day, when you have to stop doing that, there’s a major change in your life which upsets your balance. This is why we feel sad when things change on such a major scale. It’s also why people can be in unspectacular relationships for so long without wanting to break up, but when they do, they miss their former partners.

When you spend 4 years of your life in an engineering college, surrounded by the same people, doing pretty much the same things, you learn to find the fun of life in things because you have no other choice. You learn to cherish the unremarkable, because  that’s the only way you can make sense out of life. If you don’t do that, you realize that life sucks and it’s a really sad world we live in.

Nostalgia. It’s not really real. However, I am not an ass, so I will admit that what I’ve written is not entirely true. Some people really do have the time of their lives in college, because they choose to, or maybe because it comes naturally to them. And a lot of relationships are really awesome, they feel right and they make you happy. Don’t let this post get you down, it’s just a reflection.