"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
As most of you are aware, I'm at the beginning of my final undergraduate semester at Robert's Wesleyan College. I've taken all of my important classes, I've passed them, I've learned a great deal and soon enough it will be time to move on out into the "real world". In a very real sense, I'm facing a new beginning. Wherever I end up going to graduate school, I'll be moving away from Rochester, starting graduate school and beginning my academic career in earnest (assuming that I get into a grad program.) No matter what, I'll be packing up, shipping out and doing something genuinely new in about four months, and I'll be doing it in a genuinely new place.
As an army brat, there's literally nothing new to me about the process. The next few months will be hard as I wrap up and end most of my relationships at Roberts, the month or two which follow will be difficult and exciting as I forge new relationships, and then life will assume a normal rythym again.
The only thing I would call into question is the whole notion of a "new beginning".
Let me put it this way: no one that I know here at Roberts will join me at grad school, and based on the locations of my choices no one that I even know will either. I'll be in a new place, at a new school, in a new program doing new (and from what I hear, horrendous) amounts of work. All of that is both new and true, but I'm still going to be the same person. My experiences at Roberts (and every other place I've ever been) have still formed me into a certain kind of person, and the same can be said for every person with whom I've interacted
I can change where I am, and I can change what I'm doing, but the decisions I've made and the habits I've formed will always form my basic self. I'm still the one who's going, and it will be my past experiences that determine how I interpret and react to the events around me when I get wherever I'm going. It's not a new beginning, it's just a different set of circumstances.
It's not even really that fundamental of a change, frankly. And even if it was, I'm still the same person, and I'm not dead or dying, so it's still the same story.
If Shakespeare had written "The Chronicle of Horatio" and wove a grand tale of how, after Hamlet's death, Horatio left on a ship for the orient and took over a small province there, Horatio would still be the same character, and would probably still react the same way to most situations he encountered, and he would probably fulfill a similar role.
My deeper point is this: we always choose who we are, either directly or indirectly, with every decision that we make. Thus, if we move ourselves to a different place, even if we start doing different things, the likelihood that anything will actually change is negligible at best. You got where you are and I got where I am by being a certain kind of person and acting a certain kind of way. It may seem hopeless to say it, but in all likelihood none of us are likely to fundamentally change the roles we fill, ever.
So then, my point would be that this isn't a "new beginning" because they don't exist. Every moment is an opportunity to create a self, and moving around the scenery doesn't do one thing to change who we are or how we react.
As most of you are aware, I'm at the beginning of my final undergraduate semester at Robert's Wesleyan College. I've taken all of my important classes, I've passed them, I've learned a great deal and soon enough it will be time to move on out into the "real world". In a very real sense, I'm facing a new beginning. Wherever I end up going to graduate school, I'll be moving away from Rochester, starting graduate school and beginning my academic career in earnest (assuming that I get into a grad program.) No matter what, I'll be packing up, shipping out and doing something genuinely new in about four months, and I'll be doing it in a genuinely new place.
As an army brat, there's literally nothing new to me about the process. The next few months will be hard as I wrap up and end most of my relationships at Roberts, the month or two which follow will be difficult and exciting as I forge new relationships, and then life will assume a normal rythym again.
The only thing I would call into question is the whole notion of a "new beginning".
Let me put it this way: no one that I know here at Roberts will join me at grad school, and based on the locations of my choices no one that I even know will either. I'll be in a new place, at a new school, in a new program doing new (and from what I hear, horrendous) amounts of work. All of that is both new and true, but I'm still going to be the same person. My experiences at Roberts (and every other place I've ever been) have still formed me into a certain kind of person, and the same can be said for every person with whom I've interacted
I can change where I am, and I can change what I'm doing, but the decisions I've made and the habits I've formed will always form my basic self. I'm still the one who's going, and it will be my past experiences that determine how I interpret and react to the events around me when I get wherever I'm going. It's not a new beginning, it's just a different set of circumstances.
It's not even really that fundamental of a change, frankly. And even if it was, I'm still the same person, and I'm not dead or dying, so it's still the same story.
If Shakespeare had written "The Chronicle of Horatio" and wove a grand tale of how, after Hamlet's death, Horatio left on a ship for the orient and took over a small province there, Horatio would still be the same character, and would probably still react the same way to most situations he encountered, and he would probably fulfill a similar role.
My deeper point is this: we always choose who we are, either directly or indirectly, with every decision that we make. Thus, if we move ourselves to a different place, even if we start doing different things, the likelihood that anything will actually change is negligible at best. You got where you are and I got where I am by being a certain kind of person and acting a certain kind of way. It may seem hopeless to say it, but in all likelihood none of us are likely to fundamentally change the roles we fill, ever.
So then, my point would be that this isn't a "new beginning" because they don't exist. Every moment is an opportunity to create a self, and moving around the scenery doesn't do one thing to change who we are or how we react.
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