OPINIONS

Summer adventures in new city lead to growth

BY LANGLEY LEVERETT

Copy Editor

Leverett spent the summer interning in New York City. The change of environment presented challenges that ultimately led to personal growth. (photo courtesy of Langely Leverett)

Transitioning from adolescence to adulthood is not linear. It is a process that includes soaring, sputtering and backtracking movements. It is a commotion of action, emotion, undoing and consistent relearning.

College years are dense. There is so much personal development that takes place in such a short amount of time, and it can be hard to separate other’s opinions and expectations from your own. It is hard to carve your own path and set the bar for yourself.

Traveling, experiencing a different culture, meeting new people and being forced to rely wholly on your own judgments, in my opinion, is the best guide through that commotion.

Simone de Beauvoir writes in her journals of New York, “I feel like I’m leaving my life behind. I don’t know if it will be through anger or hope, but something is going to be revealed—a world so full, so rich, and so unexpected that I will have the extraordinary adventure of becoming a different me.”

This idea of becoming something different, though heavily mysterious, equally stirs excitement. Traveling and embracing a new environment gives endless possibilities of change and cultivation of character. That in itself has immense power.

I am a woman from the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. My comfort zone is pine trees, gravel roads and an open highway. However, after spending my summer interning in New York and resting in California, I am starting to realize that my comfort zone is no longer solely tied to the piece of land I grew up on.

Like Beauvoir, I felt like I was leaving my life, my home, behind on the DFW tarmac. I was overwhelmed and a little scared. But mostly, I was ready. I was ready to take home with me. I was ready to show my home to others, to let them hear what home means to me.

I had the power of embracing a new environment and I did. There were days where I soared at my internship. There were days of being overjoyed at my adventure, but there were also days of sputtering. I would backtrack on my own insecurities—my own pitfalls—and I would question myself until tears came.

In those moments, when I felt the absence of breathing space in Brooklyn, I would climb to the roof and dwell in pastures. Those moments of sitting and allowing myself to feel the un-romanticised emotions that come with travel helped me to see the beauty of my nonlinear growth process.

Growth may be hard at times, but it is necessary. Traveling has opened my eyes to new adventures. I have learned that growth, like travel, may be uncomfortable and unpredictable, but it is always overwhelmingly good.

OPINIONS

WWW.OBUSIGNAL.COM | PAGE 7 ‘Finally’: Ouachita community reminds of hope for heaven

BY SARA PATTERSON

Editor-In-Chief

After experiencing four years of first days here, I think I have the credibility to make this claim: There is nothing like the feeling of a new school year at Ouachita. The gratifying soreness resulting from moving into a new dorm or apartment, the delight of reuniting with old friends, the excitement of meeting new people and the anticipation of attending a new set of classes all signal the start of a new semester. These milestone moments never fail to make me step back and sigh, “finally.”

Before COVID changed how college is done, I didn’t fully grasp how good this “finally” feeling really is. It took the especially boring summer of 2020 for me to truly appreciate all the beautiful elements of campus life. Moving back to campus in the Fall of 2020 was a relief. Everyone was elated to see friends in real life, even though masks covered smiles most of the time. We were finally able to be together after months of uncertainty and isolation.

This fall, that “finally” feeling hit me differently. At the end of last year, I thought the pandemic would be completely over at this point, but the reality is that COVID is still a buzzword on and off campus. We still monitor our symptoms, keep a mental list of who we have spent time around, weigh the risks of attending events and worry about getting sent home. Things are still not as we hoped they would be. However, there is still some relief in knowing that this year offers a little more to look forward to than last year did. Chapel is returning from the computer screen to Jones Performing Arts Center, football games are being played

Ouachita decorated its campus to welcome students home for the fall semester. The joy of being a part of the Ouachita community reminds students and faculty of a greater joy to come. (photo by Abby Blankenship)

at Cliff Harris Stadium with a live audience and alumni will be welcomed back for homecoming weekend. Finally, we are together doing a little more of what we love about Ouachita. It is nowhere near a perfect fulfillment, but it still brings joy.

COVID has not only stirred my hope for a normalcy in college, though. This difficult season has also heightened my longing for a place where pain, hatred, suffering, sickness and death no longer reign in the world. This makes me wonder what the ultimate “finally” feeling will be like. What depths of joy we will experience when these longings meet their perfect fulfillment in heaven?

Living in expectance of a final and perfect fulfillment, believers can direct their hopes to heaven with full confidence, free of uncertainty and worry. How freeing it is to hope knowing that this hope will be fulfilled for all of eternity!

Seeing the fulfillment of our eternal hopes will require a lot more patience than just waiting out the summer between college semesters, but even the wait is a good gift from God. Even when our hopes haven’t been fulfilled, we can rejoice as we earnestly anticipate their fulfillment.

In his devotional book “Morning and Evening,” Charles Spurgeon puts it this way: “Blessed is that hunger, since it comes from God: if I may not have the full-blown blessedness of being filled, I would seek the same blessedness in its sweet bud-pining in emptiness and eagerness till I am filled with Christ.”

Believers do not have to lose hope when the world disappoints us. Instead, we can let the world’s imperfection stir our longings for an eternity spent in the presence of God. We can rejoice in these small glimpses of fulfilled hope that God blesses us with on earth. Let us allow them to direct our hopes to heaven, to the God who will fulfill our present hopes forever.