define "life"?

Okay, rewind. I feel as though in my last blog I did not do justice to all the GOOD things that HAVE been happening, and all the moments that I've been forced to stop and recognize as such. I've seen some great movies lately, and read some amazing books. Not just any movies, or any books-but ones that highlight the little moments that make up an entire life. Because sure, we all have our "defining moments" : graduation from high school, your first job, buying a house, your first words; but those big life altering moments become uniform for everyone. Most people can describe their graduation and it goes a little something like this: Ugly gown. Hat designed so it's impossible to look normal. Alphabetical order (and if you're a fellow S, the annoying wait). Pictures. Grandparents. Bullhorns. Pomp and Circumstance. the book as a metaphor for life- "NEXT CHAPTER", "TURN THE PAGE". Yes? Mine too! Because yea, graduating from high school marked a huge turning point in our lives where we marched out on our own to do whatever the next step was for us. But our lives are not about our generic moments. Our lives are about the details and the emotions and that one memory of nothing in particular that stands out in your mind for no apparent reason. High school graduation is a summation of your time there, but only barely. It overlooks that time Ashton and I snuck Vince and Bobby into my basement at 2 AM on my 16th birthday to eat cake, and ended up getting caught by my mom. It doesn't include my first kiss with my first love. It forgets to mention my friends and I crying in a friend's basement, trying to intervene in her disorder, or the time we skipped class to watch the volleyball team go to states but ended up in PetCo trying on dog cones. So even though most of us took algebra and bio, everyone's uniform graduation ceremony personally represents a series of memories that are drastically different.

It's all about putting yourself into your everyday....because your everyday will turn into your lifetime. We're always looking to the future for our next defining moment. What should our decision be? Where will we go? Am I going to be ready for this? My next one will be graduating college, I suppose. The hats, unfortunately, will be once again present, and my days at Cal Lutheran will have hopefully prepared me for that propelling moment. Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to throw my future to chance, but I won't forget that every laugh and cry shared between friends has had just as much to do with my success as my studying has. I can't prepare for life...but I can live it right now.