Daniel's Reflections.

(reposted from Facebook with permission)


It has been nearly twenty years since we, some of the brightest young minds in the state of Mississippi, graduated from the Mississippi School for Math and Science. Seeing so many of you this weekend has stirred up some old feelings for me, and I wanted to write this before it fades with the busyness of work and family, the lives that we live now. 

First of all, I miss “us.” As we drove home yesterday, I was feeling a longing, and I kept trying to put my finger on who it was I was missing so much. I thought that if I could identify those people I missed the most, we could make plans to get together in the near future and subdue the sadness. I found that no matter who I thought of, the idea of spending time together with that person was not quite enough. Eventually I identified a time I felt this way before: in the days leading up to graduation, after we knew we had made it, and that we would be leaving the hell we had grown to love as home, life took on a surreal quality. The way of life we had known for two years was coming to an end. This wasn’t entirely true of course. College life was not so different from life at MSMS – after all, we had already lived in dorms and had been forced to be more responsible than most of us would have been at such a young age. What was changing was the people who would be a part of our daily lives. Not just the people in our own cliques, but the people we didn’t get along with and the people we didn’t even really know except by name and face. This reunion, as with the ten year reunion, recalled that feeling for me - knowing that something special had happened to all of us, and we had shared it and were bound by it.

One thing I have been experiencing lately, and I think his is true for all people as they enter middle age, is the realization that it is no longer true that I can do anything I want with my life. I can still do great things, I am sure, and it’s probably true that I can do anything if I set my mind to it, but nearly 38 years of my life are already determined. Possibility is always only in the future, never the past, and eventually everyone runs out of future. The key to happiness, I think, is not to dwell on what we don’t have, including the time that is gone, but to appreciate what we do have. Even though it has been twenty years since we all lived, studied, worked, played, and struggled together in Columbus, MS, we all still have one another. We still have a special connection. As the inaugural class, we also have a connection to the school today – there is a continuity reaching from us all the way to the students on campus today, and as long as the school continues to exist, we will always be a part of that.

I love you all.