A college reflection on life, love and living

By: Kali Lamparelli
Posted In: Opinion

The tears are welling in my eyes. I am looking back over four years and remembering the losses and the tragedies living life can present. I am remembering the beauty and the splendor of these four years. Have you stopped and listened to your heart lately? This world, this moment in time moves so fast onto the next moment in time-it is seldom anyone takes a moment to stop to feel their existence. I catch myself sometimes scheduling and overbooking things to the maximum amount trying to be the successful superwoman and the pleaser of all. I forget that it is okay to stop, to feel the ache in my feet, the beat in my heart, and stop planning and scheduling things away.

I can remember all the late night talks and the morning sunrise walks. Isn’t this what life is about? Is this not what fulfills us? I can remember sitting on the docks reflecting over life with my best friend, savoring it, for I knew that four years would pass and they would pass on more quickly each year. I was overwhelmed with the desire to grasp each moment as I could. I can remember studying French while dangling my feet over a cliff. I remember falling in love once, twice, a few hundred times, with people, friends and moments.

Newport is unlike any other place in the world to go to school. Maybe it is the smell of the ocean, the crash of the waves; perhaps it is the knowledge that life moves us calmly one moment and then storms come along. It is how we handle those storms and how we rejoice in the sunrise after the storm that shows who we really are.

I have learned so much here from the professors who instilled their wisdom within me to the friends that taught me how to live life and inspired lifetimes within me. However, it was not the classes I took that I remember. Rather, it was the life I led in the thousands of minutes I spent walking along the ocean, falling in love, crashing into the waves, swinging on swings and avoiding homework. Do your homework. Listen to your heart and remember what someone wise once taught me, everything eventually gets done.