I am about to graduate college. It’s a very romantic idea, to finally reach this pinnacle, this season of life we’ve been working toward since the earliest days of our youth. Not only is it a cultural milestone, but an entrance into a new world — or at least the world through a new lens. We’re so quick to grow up, and just as quickly wish we were young again. Why was growing up our fervent goal? For me, it was because the future is where my dreams lived. The stage is now before me, on which I will soon walk and accept the diploma — my golden ticket. The paths to this stage were never straight. Not once.

I write this not as just my own exegesis, but on behalf of everyone who graduates with me in this exciting phase of our still young lives. Why is it so scary, this prospect of graduating? A simple answer is that we are predisposed to fear the unknown, both because it’s mysterious and indefinitely out of our control. For many of us, we will wake the morning after graduation with a wariness of the uncharted waters before us. Some will hold their best laid plans as a comfort. Others will harbor an optimism for the future’s unbridled possibilities. It’s all new to us, this post-grad epoch, and a door that we not only open but are literally pushed through.

There’s a sentimentality — and finality — I can’t escape. My time at Biola has been swift, yet time has also slinked by in both good ways and bad. I came in as a transfer sophomore, and since then have met people beyond count and formed relationships I cherish in ways I hardly knew I could. The fluctuating roller coaster of college foreshadows the hilly landscape of life; it’s scary how quickly mountaintops can descend into valleys, yet these valleys can incline just as fast. School is all we’ve known to this point, and for many of us, Biola has been our final home of education. Now this chapter is slowly exhaling to a solid and transcendent end.

The road to graduation has been long and intricate. There were no straight paths to this point — there rarely are to any points on our maps. From elementary school to high school to the illustrious college years, I have learned more than I can say. In a way it feels as if my life is coming to an end, then beginning again in some new respect. I’ve found that no matter how much we learn, there is always more. Always, and on an overwhelming scale.

We aren’t meant to comprehend the enormity of life. Our paths will never be perfectly flat or unbending. A vicious circle presents itself as our need to move forward fights our need to look back. The present is a hard place to inhabit, and on the eve of my graduation I feel an emotional obligation to remember the greatest moments of my life so far, as well as my time at Biola. I find myself reaching to grasp people and memories as if they’re pearls falling to the ocean, gone forever.

Tears are only ever born from pain, sadness or very great joy. Graduation tears will be a combination of them all. Still, what a bright future we have ahead! It isn’t as dark and unknown as we anticipate. What an amazingly exciting prospect that the chapters before us are as yet unwritten. We have the love and steadfastness of Christ to sustain us through the rest of our stories, as well as the love of those we hold close. Winding paths are a blessing if we would only use that time to take in the scenery.

So let’s smile and toss our caps, Biola graduates of 2013! There is so much to be happy for, from the past to the present to the arcane, undying and ever promising future.