Lessons from hell week

For most of us at Duke, the past two weeks have been hell week, filled with misery, copious amounts of work and long nights at the library. At times like these, I often find myself daydreaming—thinking about the glorious times I spent at the beach and reminiscing about the wonderful times I had, lazily basking in the sun, not having to worry about the pending midterm or the upcoming paper. Often when I am procrastinating on my studying, I find myself looking at pictures of myself near the ocean. I find myself pondering over the majestic fury and grandeur of the ocean. I wonder about the many facets of my life that the ocean personifies and dive deeply within my chain of thoughts to explore and experience the ocean’s tranquility, fury and passion.

When I reminisce upon my memories of the ocean, I think of the waves. The crashing of the waves results in a beautiful symphony, and the rise and fall of the waves creates a slow musical crescendo that murmurs against the wind. The waves kiss the sands longingly, but the kiss is, at best, ephemeral in its nature. Immediately after the waves penetrate the sands on the shore, they return to the ocean that aggressively pulls them back to the confines of where they belonged. I find myself amazed at the irony of the feat.

The waves that crash amongst each other and struggle to romance the soft tranquility of the shores immediately bid farewell and are heaved back within the ocean’s deep abyss. Some waves travel longer than others, but eventually each wave that caresses the sands is hauled back into the melancholic depths of the tears that the ocean carried within. I find that analogy to be deeply synonymous of my life—my time as a Duke student and my struggles to stay above the coast during Hell week.

The transient nature of the waves that caress the shores reminds me of the many things in my life at Duke as well as the nature of life itself. Like the ephemeral nature of the waves kissing the shores of the beach, the lives we lead are fleeting in nature; and like every wave that is pulled back to the confines of the ocean, each human being dies, forcefully pulled back into the deep unending abyss of death.

You see, I don’t mention the transience of life to elucidate the tragedy of the short lives we lead but rather to emphasize the beauty of the time we spend on this earth. The nature of the time we spend alive and its brevity is often perceived as a bittersweet tragedy because we realize that the people we deeply love are only going to be with us for a short time and the things we are passionate about will stop being a part of our existences upon our deaths. Yet, with life’s transience comes a sense of beauty because, with each moment that we spend and with each individual that we deeply love, there exists fecund memories, which we carry with us to our deathbeds and beyond. We prevent these memories from being expunged through the faces of those we deeply love and through the written works we create.

It is truly unfortunate how, instead of realizing the brevity of our lives and making inner happiness and peace the ultimate goal of our ephemeral existence, we often focus upon the material goals we aspire to. For me, life at Duke and beyond has often become a perpetual race for achieving my goals, for building a certain resume, for entering a specific career, for reaching my potential and pinnacle of success and for making other individuals in my life that I love happy. Sadly though, when those things have come with a grave price of ignoring my personal happiness and inner peace, I have deeply regretted the choices I have made. Success of any sort has always left me wanting for more, and in the confines of the daily rat race of life, pacifying my soul is something that I have often ignored.

It is important to realize, however, that the long and slow crests of time are not eternally beautiful, but despite the undulating shades of light and gray that characteristically feature our lives (aka midterm weeks), our lives themselves are ephemeral in their nature. Thus, in times of hardships as we struggle to find light on the shore, it becomes integral to truly breathe in the milieu around us and latch onto everything that we deeply love. These cherished memories that we gather will collectively engage in an animated vignette as we lay upon our deathbeds one day, and hence, it is really up to us to truly engage our lives to develop the most powerful vignette we can. Like each wave that characteristically kisses the shore and is aggressively returned to the confines of the ocean's abyss, we will one day leave the world and look back at these short vignettes as we breathe our last breaths akin to those of us who have left the world in the past and those who will continue to do so in the future.

Maryam Ali is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs on alternate Fridays.