By Kyr Andreau Patria | May 3, 2024
Here I was, floating on the sea on a hot Saturday afternoon in April. There were blue skies, calm waters, and an airplane just passed above me. Around me were a group of children and two of my colleagues.
It was during a field trip, one of the few that I undertook in my third year of college. On the water, pondering the whole thing, I said to myself, “It all felt similar to my last days of high school.”
The weather, the light, the atmosphere, how I went about it — I felt like I’ve been there before. And so I began to recall. Six years ago I first had this awakening, this urge that kept increasing as my senior year went on. Could it be God telling me to cherish every moment from then on? Why did it feel like my days were numbered?
Looking back on this situation, we can simplify to it being just this: Maybe I was just having a case of developing an emotional attachment to my working environment. Maybe I became too invested in the whole thing that a part of me knew that it was going to be tear-jerking once it was all over. I became subconscious of everything, so my high school self decided to try and fulfill as many items on my imaginary bucket list. It was almost as if I only had a year to live.
Yeah, maybe it was like that.
It was that small pressure of knowing that there are only ten months to go, ten months to comply, and ten more months to interact with the people you feel comfortable with before spending the rest of the remaining weeks doing rehearsals and then graduating. In doing so, and knowing that it was the last year, the intuitive or subconscious mind was determined to make these remaining days worth something. So it strived to make me do almost everything for fear of being regretful.
From another aspect, maybe it was just me learning at 15 to be grateful for having a good working environment and classmates who get along. Unfortunately, most of them at that time didn’t care about memories or moments that much. Only when they went to college did they start moping on social media about their past lives, as I observed.
This then brings me to this thought: Along the way, once we become acclimated to our schools, we become so focused on character-driven matters like relationships with the people we love, social aspects such as trying to fit in and be appreciated, our obsession with sports, material things, and social media.
We thought so much about our personal matters and delved deep into our jobs and hobbies that we forgot to look back and appreciate how far we’ve come and accomplished. And only when there’s only a year, a month or two left, or once we already left school that it finally kicks in.
Six years later, these signs are slowly becoming evident. As I continued working, I began to notice more golden hours, glimpses of moments with my peers and people I know, interactions that felt almost identical, and some events felt bigger than usual.
I’ve seen this movie before; but why didn’t I have this feeling when I was still a freshman and a sophomore? Why this year? Why do I always think that there will be a next time? And when that next time came, it suddenly became the last time. Though I still have — hopefully — one more year to go.
Even still, so many of these things happening now in such a short span of time makes me think I’m nearing the end sooner than I thought.
