Today it became official. I cannot live in denial for much longer about this whole Oxford thing. I received my first email from one of my tutors, a premier scholar of C.S. Lewis. He gave me a rather vague assignment to read as much of Lewis as possible before term, which made me cringe slightly—there’s not much time before term commences and yet oh so much Lewis to read.
Nonetheless, I was ecstatic. How can I deny my future when I’m given practical responsibilities to make my future possible? That’s what it comes down to, really, for me in this journey to Oxford. The dream becomes much more tangible, attainable when I have to do something to get myself there.
There are obvious signs in my life that the time draws near, like flipping through my planner and seeing so few pages between now and then. But it is the real things, the boring, mundane, responsible things that truly make me realize it’s happening. Like when I called my bank to tell them I would use my debit card while abroad. After I filled prescriptions, checked airline baggage guidelines, made doctor appointments, investigated ordering Euros/Pounds, etc., etc., I have become gradually more acclimated to the idea that I am going. It’s happening. It. Is. Happening.
This waiting period is wearing on me, when acknowledging how little time I have left creates a weird tension between enjoying that time and using that time wisely to prepare for the unknown. As I was telling a friend, it makes me think of Gandalf telling Frodo he will leave for the adventure of a lifetime soon, so he should rest and relax until that time while simultaneously he should somehow make himself ready.
Isn’t it somehow forced, staged, to enjoy my last meal there or visit with so and so before I leave? Doesn’t it inject that which I love with this heightened awareness and nostalgia so that that which I love is overshadowed, dimmed?
It also reminds me of Good Will Hunting when Robin Williams puts Matt Damon in his place, telling him he can quote every book known to mankind but what has he actually experienced himself? In one of my earlier posts, I described how I have tried to piece together an understanding of Oxford through reading literature written at or about Oxford. I have asked people who have studied there to tell me what they love about their Oxford. I have looked up pictures and read articles….but this all amounts to brain knowledge, not experience knowledge. It’s a thousand thoughts, emotions, facts that remain two-dimensional when I want so badly to feel the three-dimensional, faceted, heady experience itself. Only that can really unlock these riddles of advice and thoughts and pictures for the brilliance that they really are.
I mean, thinking of how quickly college itself has evaporated, I am sad to think of how close I am to leaving, for then the experience has started and will soon be over. That’s a stupid philosophy, I know. Studying at Oxford won’t be the pinnacle of my life and once it’s over, there will be a million other noteworthy experiences to anticipate. And yet I also know, completely and without a doubt, that this will be a year unlike any other, full of firsts and onlys.
In life, there are those breathtaking moments that live only in our memory, which seems to smooth away each imperfection and make the moment perhaps more beautiful than it ever actually was. I have this strange feeling that I’ve jumped ahead and a frustrating cycle awaits me. I’m sitting here envisioning a perfect version of what I will experience, expecting that the reality cannot possibly live up to that dream, and knowing that afterward I will perfect that imperfect experience and miss it sorely as I dream of it.
Perhaps that makes sense only to me. Maybe that is as it should be. I thought about what this would feel like, this period of waiting before the birth of one beautiful year. I want the vigil to be over and yet I dread it because the vigil is so unique, so fascinating and frustrating in and of itself.
I’ll look back at this time and wish I could return to it. Not just my time at Oxford, but this exhilarating, painfully intense moment on the brink of that time. I picture myself wondering, “If only I could go back to that time before I knew, before I had any idea of what I will experience. Before I could miss what is to come for I had no idea what would come.”
Maybe I won’t feel any of these of things. Maybe it’s useless and silly to think ahead as though I can possibly know my future self. I just like to think that I can. I feel helpless here on the brink, knowing the subsequent fall is coming. Therefore I daydream and wonder aimlessly in a muddled fashion. Bear with me.
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