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What. Is. Living? Or rather, living a happy life? *turn head* waiver

A couple weeks ago a study of 70-year-olds in the New York Times found that those whowere happiest near the end of their lives tended to divide time into phases while theunhappiest tended to see time as an unbroken flow, with themselves as corks bobbing on

top of it.

So for those who dont want to end up with 90 cats, let us take life in the form ofa bookLet us pretend that we are living in the chapters of a novel, a novel of life, and the chapterstogether, and only the chapters together, make up who we are and what our story is.

Right now, were all fresh college students. They say that the college years are meant to beenjoyed; more than intellectual inquiry, these are the memories that may be cherished orremembered for the rest of our lives,*JOKEJOKEJOKE* and I think this sentiment drovea lot of my own high school experience.

On the bus ride home from my high school senior grad night, my classmate asked me:Whats really the difference between an elite college and a community college? Actually,why do people go to college anyway?

At first, I thought of professors, curriculum, maybereputation (colloquial)? But then as Ithought long and hard, I had to admit that online classes now provided a simulatedexperience, same professors, perhaps even better professors, more well-thought-outcurriculum. And then I realized, it was the conversations that students have with each otherthat makes college the experience that it isa gathering ground for knowledge not becauseprofessors hand out information but because students are there to share and discuss and

create. So in the college chapter, meet new characters, bring back old ones, look at thingswith a different perspective. It is the only instance in which our only real responsibility is tolearn, to live, to meet people.

That doesnt mean of course, party every nightlets be honest, things get old. Keep yourcollege experience, well, novel. If you read a book with the same ending to every paragraph,wouldnt you be bored and toss the book aside?

When one person meets another, not only do they each become new characters in theothers novel of life, but they also have access to new stories that they individually would not

be able to experience. In other words, we cannot live every life we want to live.We cant allbe President of the United States, Albert Einstein, or George W. Bush. Not that any of uswould want to be him. Unless you can be Herman Cain. We cannot be other people, becauseas Oscar Wilde said, be yourself; everyone else is taken. We cannot change thesocioeconomic conditions we were born in, be reality TV stars, and we cant change whetherwere from Ohio or Jersey Shore. But what we can do is peruse the memory of differentexperiences (peruse the stories of those we meet), those whose font is in Coriva, Times NewRoman , or my favorite, Comic Sans (yeayah)andlive through them. So when we meet

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other people, we are not just adding a plus one to our Facebook friends list. We arereceiving the opportunity to live vicariously in anothernovel, to live two lives, if onlymomentarily, for once.

And after publishing all these installments of this novel of life, a book seems to emerge. At

the end of a life, if we are able to view this story as the culmination and combination of suchchapters, I think it is inevitable that we smile at our experiences fondly and remark, what alife.

Ultimately, living is an art form, a skill, as much as novel-writing is, and probably more so.The writer of that New York Times article on the seventy-year-olds concluded, that peopleget better at the art of living as they age. But I urge you to start living now, so, end,peacefully, whatever high school chapters and preexisting judgements on people, and openyour hearts, and open your minds. Because the college chapter of your story has alreadybegun.