That Went Quick

As I’ve covered on multiple occasions there are certain events, usually birthdays, anniversaries, and New Year’s Day, that help us mark the passing of time. We often get caught up in the day to day activities that have taken over our lives, but these events remind us that time is charging ahead. In 2009 I wrote about how, for me, one of these events is the act of purchasing a new computer. Well, this past weekend I discovered another event that causes me to stop and reflect; the Summer Olympics.

During a visit with some friends at home in Syracuse this weekend we got to talking about the patently absurd comments made by Ray Allen and Dwyane Wade in which they suggested that they should be paid to play for the US National Team. I don’t want to get into it because the very suggestion (whether it was just in response to a question or not) bothers me greatly. The conversation naturally led to a quick mention of the 2012 games this summer in London, which caused someone to say, “I can’t believe that the Olympics are right around the corner again.” Almost immediately everyone was in agreement about how quickly the past four years have gone. Maybe we’re all crazy, but it just doesn’t seem like four years have passed since Michael Phelps was dominating in the pool and the Redeem Team was being awarded their gold medals. I distinctly remember setting an alarm at my buddy’s apartment to wake up at the crack of dawn to watch the gold medal game between Spain and the US and it’s hard for me to believe that LeBron James played two more full seasons for the Cavaliers after that.

People always talk about how quickly their time in college went and I think there’s plenty of truth to that. However, as much as it seemed like my college years (2004-08) flew by I think I would make the case that 2008-12 elapsed even quicker. Not only did the time fly by, but things in my life have also changed drastically in that four year span. Since the summer of 2008 (probably the best summer of my life) I have had three jobs. Two of them only lasted for 3-4 months each, but still, three jobs is three jobs. I have lived in three different apartments and in June it will be four. I have also officially become a Connecticut resident.

While on the surface it might seem like things in your life are essentially the same as they were four years ago, in most cases they are actually considerably different. If you really stop and think about it I’m sure that you’ll agree.

I think college seemed to last a little bit longer than this recent four year stretch, for me anyway, because everyone in my social network (not to name a famous movie or anything) was doing similar things. We all had the structure of the school calendar. Classes, projects, papers, Christmas break, Spring break, summer vacation, etc. We were also all living the college lifestyle and obviously my college friends and I were all living within the same two mile radius. For the most part it was a shared experience.

Everything is a bit more scattered now. Not only do I have friends littered all over the country (Dallas, Chicago, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Denver, Atlanta, etc.), but they’re all making life altering decisions at a rapid rate. I have friends that have been married for over a year, friends that are engaged, friends with houses, friends with dogs, and a friend who's a year older than me that has two kids. Everyone also works in a different field. In college they may have had different majors, but we were still in the same place, so the differences were minimized. Everyone in my social network now has new stories, hobbies, friends, etc. It's still hard to believe, but all of these changed have ocurred since the Beijing Olympics.

While certain aspects of my life have changed in the past four years (where I live, what I do, who I hang out with, etc.) I still like to think that I’m the same person that I was back in 2008, but I know that that’s not the case.  Not only am I now out of shape, but I also believe that I’m smarter (still waiting for that phone call Jeopardy!), more mature, more stubborn (if that was even possible), hopefully less arrogant, but there’s no guarantee of that, and a little mellowed out. I read more, I write more, and I probably watch more TV. I also rarely get hammered on both nights of the weekend. Plus, I know that I don’t have everything figured out, but until now I didn’t let anyone know that.

What’s weird is that I thought I knew it all when I was 18. Back then, though, I was just a naïve kid who thought that the key to life was “beating the system and finding the happy medium” (verbatim from my senior quotes). Now I don’t want to unequivocally say that I was wrong because obviously those words of wisdom still hold true in certain instances, but they are by no means the be all end all. At the time I was convinced that those two tidbits contained all the answers to life’s questions.

I guess my point is that that 18 year old kid who thought he was right about everything really didn’t know much. From 18-22 I learned countless life lessons that have made me who I am today. As cliche as it may sound, I grew up in my time in college. Ironically though, that 22 year old version of me also thought that he was right about everything. Once again he would go on to learn plenty in the years ahead. As much as college prepares us for the “real world” there really is no teacher like experience. Now at 26 I'm mature enough to admit that I don't have all the answers. I still have plenty of opinions, but that doesn't mean that I'm always right.

I now know that for whatever reason I stop and re-assess my life every four years. I guess it makes sense because high school lasted for four years, college lasted for four years, and now I’ve been in the “real world” for four years, but it took the mention of the 2008 Summer Olympics to trigger my quadrennial habit. Coincidentally there was a How I Met Your Mother episode a few weeks back where over the stretch of 15 years the characters watched the Star Wars trilogy in the years 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2012 and looked ahead to what their lives would be like each three years in the future.

Either way, I know that there will be immeasurable life changing events, lessons to learn, difficult decisions to make, and experiences to share before the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. What’s really scary, though, is that by then I’ll be 30.