“The world is waiting for us to graduate from ourselves.”- Shannon L. Adler

Four years ago, I was impatiently waiting for my day to graduate from high school. Despite my best efforts, I had succumbed to what is affectionately termed as “senioritis” and I was just ready to get done with the polo shirts, the lockers, a block schedule, and a early commute every morning. Yes, I would miss my friends and I would miss the unique atmosphere of an all girls school, but I was ready.

In a little more than a couple weeks, I will be graduating again. But this time, the word “graduation” means something different. It means leaving the security blanket of school and hopefully making something of myself. It means seizing a wonderful opportunity to serve people for a year in another state (more on that closer to time). And more tangibly, it means getting done with all these papers and projects that have been chasing me up and down an invisible roller coaster for the past month.

Like Ms. Adler says, I will be graduating from myself. In a way. My true and complete graduation from myself will take place (hopefully) far in the future, but that is not the graduation that I speak of.

I will graduate from being a student (after about 18 years), concerned mostly with completing homework and receiving helpful judgments called grades.

I will graduate into a life of giving my thoughts and my aid to others.

I will graduate into a world that I know will have puddles, but also rainbows.

I (hope) to (someday) graduate into becoming a wife and a mother.

And most importantly, I will graduate into a Sarah who will remember to love and listen and change.

“Then I reflected that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.” – Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”

First, let me apologize for the lack of posts recently. This semester has been especially difficult.

This semester, I signed up for a yoga class with the university. Unlike my other classes, it does not have weekly assignments or stress associated with it. Instead, it works as a destresser.

I took a yoga class for an elective in high school and even then I was somewhat wary of taking it. I was well aware that it could help take some weight off shoulders at the end of each week, but I was also extremely aware of its increasingly popular status in society. I was afraid that my class would be full of people who were taking it simply because it is fashionable in some way, but maybe because it is offered at the university and not at a studio, it does not seem to be.

My instructor especially emphasizes the breath. He says that each movement should by synchronized our inhales and exhales, something that I haven’t perfected quite yet. Quite often, I am too intent on not falling out of poses or doing them correctly to focus on my breathing. Every once in a while, he asks if any of us have stopped breathing during the current pose, a sign that we might be pushing our bodies past our limit. My honest answer, which I don’t say out loud, is that I hadn’t noticed.

The one pose during which I am very cognizant of my breath is shavasana, or “corpse pose.” Physically, it is the easiest pose as it consists of laying on your spine with your arms nestled against your sides and your eyes closed. Some people find it the most difficult as thoughts have a tendency to take over. Ideally, in this pose, one should become grounded in their body, in their breath, in their existence and nothing else.

At the end of my first yoga class, we lay like this for a few minutes and I was very aware of my blood. I felt it pulsing in my arm and I spent the time idly imagining it running its course through my body, an image, which I realize now, is perhaps slightly disturbing. But at that time, I was amazed at my heart’s ability to send the substance throughout my body and at it changing and changelessness. That is, cells die and are reborn, but are swept along in the same current of life. At that point, my blood, my body was different than it was a moment, a day, a year before that. But it was the same.

In this present moment, I am drinking blueberry green tea, sitting on my bed, listening to the Pentatonix radio on Pandora, and typing this. I am not aware of my veins right now, but I am aware of the slight cramp in my fingers and the feeling of the keys on my fingers, which are pressing the keys out of memory. I know that when I move onto other things later today, this moment may or may not matter. Because I will be in a different present. I will have different, but the same blood in my veins.

In the Broadway version of The Lion King, Simba sings of the “Endless Night” that he is experiencing when he feels abandoned by his father:

“Where has the starlight gone?

Dark is the day

How can I find my way home?

Home is an empty dream

Lost to the night

Father, I feel so alone.”

But something amazing happens. The chorus starts singing,”I know that the night must end. And that the sun will rise.” And Simba eventually joins in. His story, his battle is really just beginning, but he’s already starting to realize that he has a choice. He can either believe that the night, his exile, is never ending… or he can put his faith in the ever consistent sunrise.

Everything is a choice.

Whether or not we get out of bed in the morning is a choice. Eating breakfast is a choice. Driving safely is a choice. We always choose what we do, even if we do not realize it. Even if they are automatic.

I read a short, not quite credible clickbait article from “Health of Women” that made me upset this morning titled “Robin Williams did not die from suicide, wake up people.” A couple of my Facebook friends had shared it. I clicked on it because I was expecting some crazy idea about some conspiracy (it was on Facebook, after all). As it turns out, the author did have a crazy idea. And it was this: Robin Williams died from depression and not from suicide. He also wrote that suicide is not a choice.

Becoming depressed may not be a choice, but staying depressed is. One can cheer themselves up (it can seem impossible, I admit) or choose the night, to stay burden down by the oppressive blackness. If one can choose to not feel depressed, shouldn’t one be able to choose life?

Suicide, by definition, is voluntary. It is deliberately, intentionally killing oneself. It usually means that one has a plan thought out beforehand. It is not inevitable.

I agree wholeheartedly that mood disorders, all mental illnesses, and suicide have collected stigma that should be dissolved. This will only happen when those afflicted with these kind of darknesses are truly heard. Not understood. I don’t think it’s possible for mental illness to be completely understood by everyone. They just need to be heard and acknowledged.

That acknowledgement is a choice.

Going to class is a choice.

Eating beef ramen over chicken is a choice.

Going to work on time (or even working in the first place) is a choice.

Reading this is a choice.

And above all, life is a choice. The biggest, the hardest, and the most important one of all.

“A single tiny light creates a space where darkness cannot exist. The light vanquishes the darkness. Try as it might, the darkness cannot conquer the light.” – Donald L. Hicks

I do not think I am alone in my awe of what light can do to darkness. This awe has been prevalent since the beginning of humans’ time on earth and I suspect that it will be around long after I’m gone. Our relationship with light, however, has changed since the early humans’ discovery of fire. We, especially in first world countries like the U.S.,  do not always quite get the true relationship of dark and light. We have so much light at night, we can’t always see the stars. Many astrologists have to resort to retreating to the mountains or to secluded places away from civilization where their only adversary is the weather.

Perhaps because of the constant presence of light pollution, I am extra aware of the power that a single candle can bestow onto a room and how a flashlight can transform a forested campsite. A candle won’t light up everything in the room entirely, but it does illuminate the things that do matter: family, friends, a book, a game introduced by a child’s mother to decrease fear… When camping, I have seen the beam of a flashlight transform pine trees into monsters with many wild hands, but I have also seen it shine on rocks I might have stumbled on, the path to my destination (usually the bathroom), and the welcoming sight of our family tent.

Our relationship with darkness and light is not always literal. Darkness can be a fitting, albeit simple, metaphor for depression, natural disasters, tragedies like the Oregon school shooting, or just personal struggles. Similarly, light is whatever expels that darkness.

Some of my lights are:

My family. They glow with love for me, each other, and for others around them.

My friends. They’re like glow-in-the-dark-stars, except they don’t fade after a certain time.

Those are the easy ones. The ones on the top of my head.

I also find my lights in:

Good literature, especially the ones that make me tingle inside.

Bananagrams.

Relaying my dreams to my roommate.

Spending time with my beau, even if it’s for a few minutes.

Laughing at myself.

Serving other people, especially if they have stories to tell.

Having enough food.

Being other people’s lights

I often worry that I’m not doing anything that will make my life memorable. But I guess if I’m at least one person’s light during my lifetime, that will suffice.