Often enough, life has been about transitions, moving on, completion and next steps. That being said, the first phase or period that comes to mind, regarding this prompt, was the college experience– those years post-high school when I was on my own, to a certain extent. However, I don’t remember feeling like it was all that difficult to say goodbye to it, other than the sadness of leaving behind friends, which is liable to happen in different settings throughout life.
I occasionally return to those years as if they were a benchmark of sorts, or highpoint. I have come to see them, in some ways, as the best years of my life, with that unique mix of a certain autonomy and responsibility, and of course the daily experience of living in a college dorm with a bunch of people my age who had yet to grow into their more mature selves. Fifty-plus years on, those were the days…
What has come since has been a mix of blissful and challenging, often wondrous in its own right. But that college experience will always stand alone, as much a monument to pre-adulthood as it was preparation for the workaday world.
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