a. passing especially quickly into and out of existence.
b. passing through or by a place with only a brief stay or sojourn.
Yes I did just copy and paste all of this from the Merriam Webster website. But it's all to illustrate a point and sound intelligent and educated. Also I will now be adding "fugacious" to my vocabulary. Who knew such a wonderous word existed.
Transient. This word keeps running through my mind as I face the frustrations of preparing for a new school year just a few weeks after the last one ended. Well, it feels like weeks, but it's been two months. Maybe you're sitting there asking me why I'm already preparing for school, it's not even August. I think it's possible I was a boy scout in a previous life. I like being prepared is all. But anyway, I was making a point. Transient. Transitions. That is what my life has become. Nothing, it seems, is permanent anymore. Not since Junior year of high school. Senior year the preparations began for college, the applications, the visits, the receiving of scores from standardized tests that need to be retaken. All that junk. Then it's the summer before college. You've made a decision, put down a deposit. Now you're buying everything you need to sustain yourself away from mom (and dad, too, but honestly, when has dad done your laundry or cooked you dinner?). And before you've mentally prepared yourself for possibly the biggest leap, socially, academically, and physically (metaphorically speaking) of your life, you're in a dorm with some kid you've never met before (or, for me, a girl I met on a visit who was just as scared about getting stuck with a stranger as I was).
But even that's not permanent. Right now I'm in the midst, in the swamp, right at the epicenter, of the college years. When every summer you're awkwardly back at home in that room you grew up in with that poster of that boy band that you would never admit to ever having listened to because obviously you're that much more pretentious, having been to college, and have a much better grasp on what quality music is now. But really you saw them twice in concert. You're working that summer job that is getting you nowhere closer to the field you want to be in, but it pays for college. You're away from all the people who became your make shift family during school. You're back with your real family trying to find how you fit there again. I'm in my second summer of all this.
I also don't anticipate that this will change anytime soon. After my four years of undergraduate studies are through I plan to attend Grad school. I want to get my PhD. I want to teach. But all that extra education is going to keep my life in a changing, moving cycle of uncertainties, unclear future, and indefinite plans. It's frustrating to me, being the kind of planning person I am, to live this way. At the same time, though, it's wonderful.
Transitions are challenging, you can learn and experience so much that you wouldn't if you were at a stand still. I want to see the world, even if that world is just made up of a couple different universities. I want to meet everyone ever (don't you ever get depressed when you think about all the people in existence that you'll never meet? I do).
Here's where discomfort and real living trump "comfort," "stability," and "control." I am learning to love the transient and to really dwell and abide in it. I make the most of the few consecutive months I have in one place.
I guess there really is no finish to this post. It's rather scattered. The point of all this is just to say that there is no problem with the transient or the "fugacious." In fact, it grants many opportunities. And I can't wait to see where God takes me for my graduate studies, who he introduces me to, and where he stations me for the rest of my life. Even if the rest of my life is completely transient.
