The Certainty of Uncertainty

November 17, 2006

by Samantha Moland

Today, on my twenty-first birthday, I can affirm with complete conviction that if there is one certainty in life, it is that life is full of uncertainties. At age four, I didn’t know if shoelaces were worth the effort. At age ten, I didn’t realize there was more to fashion than stirrup pants and saddle shoes. No surprise that at age sixteen I didn’t know if I’d survive another night with a 10:30 p.m. curfew.

Today I find myself knowing a thing or two about the loop-swoop-pull shoe tying technique, realizing that scrunchies no longer count as an appropriate hair accessory, and understanding that my Mum didn’t always have cruel intentions with respect to my curfew. However, while some of my childhood queries have been answered, an exponential amount of questions about the future stare back at me with the same blunt reality of two shoelaces that could not possibly converge in the mind of a four year old.

Consider the loaded question everyone loves to ask the senior class, “What are you doing next year?” While many students may have a legitimate answer, there are twice as many who either bullshit an acceptable response, laugh the question off and move on, or flat out ignore the issue altogether.

Regardless of the accurate or fabricated answer, the presence of the question itself is quite real and complex enough. (Let us not even start as to what the appropriate reply to such a question would even be). While it is only November and the air is settling with a quiet crispness and promise of snow, this fleeting month will soon give way to finals and Winter Break. Only is a word that quickly turns to already and before long Spring will be upon us and diplomas within reach. The urgency of answering the question presses down with each passing day.

It is all too easy to nestle into the comforts of campus within the safe bounds of Tufts University with its lawns neatly trimmed year round, reminder emails from Dowling and endless supply of Cracklin’ Oat Bran at Dewick.

But there will come a time when the block schedule no longer dictates where you will be at 10:30 a.m. and when the Tufts Daily is discounted as a justifiable, regular news source. Perspectives change, greater uncertainties surface and suddenly you’ll realize that living across campus from your friends wasn’t so far after all.

Next thing you know you’ll be buying your own lawnmower, fixing your mailbox that some teenager plowed down last Saturday night, and attending 40th birthday parties amongst drunken investment bankers with their ties tightened around their foreheads, singing and “dancing” to the 1982 hit “Come on Eileen.” Well, maybe it won’t be that extreme. But my point is this: Tufts is amazing and senior year thus far has been the most incredible year on the hill. So what to do with all this merriment?

Find out what makes you happiest and hold on to it. Those moments from the past four years that have made you smile and laugh and captured your heart are the lessons to take along with you. The people that made it happen are worth more than you realize and deserve the world along with your continued friendship. So while the inevitable “what are you doing next year” question may still be unanswerable, at least you can be certain about knowing what lessons you can take with you, no matter where you are and what friends will be there for you after they retire their brown and blue wardrobe.

Yes, it’s only November. But suddenly I’m 21 which is almost 40. Well not quite, but nonetheless time races on with uncertainties ahead. But uncertainty is really just another word for “unplanned excitement.” So hold on to those certainties that do in fact make you happiest right here and now. Reservations about the future become that much more manageable and exciting with such memories and friends by your side. Besides, who would want to miss your 40th birthday and the opportunity to chorus the words to “Jessie’s Girl” at the top of their lungs?