I currently need a break from our week long “Fall Break.” I enjoyed city-hopping and exploring Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, and Paris, but my mind and body need a rest. Despite this feeling of exhaustion, this break taught me about the beauty of being unapologetic.
I traveled with five friends and our first stop was Barcelona, where we experienced our first Pub Crawl. We missed the bus on our way to the first bar and after a hiccup in finding the right location of it, we all took a breath of fresh air once we cheered to our first drink of the night. We were the youngest people amongst others in the group, which gave us more of a reason to joke around loudly and proudly and laugh as much as we wanted. After all, how often does one get a chance to be wild and free in Barcelona?
At the last bar, we stumbled upon a young newlywed couple from Utah, who were traveling through Spain for their honeymoon. During our conversation, they mentioned how great it was that we were young college students traveling and having fun. The wife mentioned how she was envious of our adventures and said, “Oh, how I miss college.”
Her comment struck me at first. I thought, “Why would anyone want to go back to college?” Isn’t the whole point of “college” to graduate with a degree and then figure out how to live a fulfilling life, while juggling work, relationships, and things that bring people joy? As soon as I wrote this sentence, I now understand what she meant. Life is a handful and sometimes it is refreshing to take a step back and try not to grow up so fast.
I wondered why would anyone want to go back to four years of struggling to discover their interests, identities, and what makes them wholesome. I prided myself in claiming I was mature enough to rise against the anxieties of growing up. I believed after college life would magically unravel before me and that I could have all the freedom to do whatever I pleased. Yet, according to this couple, this was most likely not going to happen.
As we get older, we have fewer excuses to mess up. Once we reach a certain age, we are expected to be successful and competent adults. There is less wiggle room to make mistakes that we made when we were younger because it is expected of us to have our lives in order.
I have met many adults, such as the couple at the bar, who all wished to go back to college and now I finally understand what they mean. They want to go back to a time, where it was okay to make mistakes, act absentmindedly, and be naive enough to think they have it all figured out. In the process of doing these things, we have the chance of discovering ourselves, yet as we get older, there is pressure to be adults with everything figured out. The beauty of being young is that one can be unapologetic.
Unapologetically silly, reckless, confused, emotional, and most importantly, unapologetically ourselves. So, there should be no rush to grow up. Instead, each moment should be acknowledged because we only have now and it will be harder to justify such actions as a grown-up.
As I look through all of my pictures of city-hopping through Europe – lost in the metro station, navigating through the streets, taking random selfies in restrooms of bars, I am reminded to be unapologetic. I do not need to rush to grow up. After all, everything I experience now is helping me in knowing myself. So that when I am an adult balancing a work and social life and I make a mistake, I can trust myself. I hope that I will know myself well enough to handle any hurdles without wishing for a time to be my younger self. I need to be unapologetically me at this moment, so that the future me will trust I can handle anything because I took chances of being young and free.
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