water

I’ve had many an opportunity to walk down to the Providence river this semester. Something about standing by the edge of the water fills me with wonder unlike anything else. I don’t know if I could ever manage to live too far from a body of water.

I find myself thinking a lot about change. The past year has certainly brought about more change than I ever could have imagined, and I am about to leap into another adventure. Deep down, I’m terrified. For one, I’m terrified of what I’ll come back to. What will happen while I’m gone? Will my friends remember me? Will there even be a place for me when I’m back? I know that can’t be helped. Whenever my mind wanders here, I think back to a quote shared by my two favorite podcast theatres;¹ “I’ve never known someone who wasn’t afraid before going on an adventure”. That can’t be helped, I suppose.

More than that, I’m afraid of tiring out on change. I don’t want to turn into the human equivalent of a hermit crab, trying to find the nearest shell to hide myself in. Don’t get me wrong, hermit crabs are adorable. And there’s nothing wrong with searching for comfort and safety. But I don’t want to be desperate for it. That’s no way to live. Then, how does one keep from burning out on change, on novelty, and on exploration?

I don’t know. The usual advice for managing burn-out probably applies; make time for other parts of your life, take it slow if you need to, etc etc. But then again, I don’t know that we always have such luxury. While some of the change I’ve been through was voluntary, and my study abroad certainly is, you can’t always control that. Then what?

Who knows. I’m not writing this to give anyone advice. I hope you’re not here for that, and if you are, the only thing I can recommend with confidence is finding a therapist. Really, it’s more helpful than you would think, though it might be a bit of a process. I was very lucky with mine, but I hear it’s worth it even if you’re not. You can find some near you through https://zencare.co, or by googling.

Faced with the looming future, I’ve instead found comfort in what is always there, and what I can always do. For one, I’ve dedicated a lot of time to academics. I still feel like I have so much to learn, and I love doing it. A friend once said that mathematics is the hardest major because your job is to get stuck, and as soon as you are unstuck, and you make progress, you’re back to being stuck. I won’t insist that the first part of that statement is true, but the second resonates with my experience. Math is something like a safeguard against the future to me, because I know nobody can take it away from me, and I love doing it. Investing into what I love doing feels like a safe investment, but it’s not stagnating. It’s moving forward on something that actually matters to me. I fear the day I get sick of mathematics, or when I have nothing meaningful left to invest my time in. Perhaps I shouldn’t; after all, such a day would only be an opportunity to dive wholeheartedly into another part of the cosmos.

We haven’t had a lot of snow this season, but we’ve certainly had our share of downpours. Nights when the rain fell so hard that my umbrella, “waterproof” backpack, and coat were soaked right through. I can’t resist drawing an analogy between water pouring forcefully from above and the sort of change that sweeps you off your feet, that carries you far and without control. Though the waters of the river and the sea are always there for you to swim in, and are always flowing past and toward the future, we find no such agency in those of the sky; those that come down upon our lives with little warning beyond a weather report, and sweep away all we know to be true. Sometimes good, sometimes bad; the water cleanses the same as it sullies.

What is my point with this? It sucks not to have agency in change. It really does. But I think it’s also a rare day on which we know what is actually best for us. What we would rather cling to may be what is weighing us down; and what we would rather let go of might be the boat that carries us to a safer shore. And sometimes, there is nothing to be done but wait, and float on the surface of the sea until the tide turns, and the currents bring a lifeline. That’s the hardest; it takes little effort to sink down to the depths, your thoughts like diving weights. It’s not always possible to overcome it, and I think from time to time of those that weren’t so lucky. It’s still worth trying, I think.

I’m finishing this up now from my apartment in Budapest, over a month after the first draft of this was written. I’ve seen in the interim a wholly unexpected adventure, but that’s a story for another day. We’ve already seen some snow here; the soft kind that makes for good snowball fights. A dusting of change, built up in the freezing cold, until it’s accumulated enough to notice. To pick up and throw at a friend. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2025.