What drives us to stay up at unreasonable hours at night, drinking our nth cup of coffee? Grades and social expectations all can be answers for occasional sleep deprivation. But what keeps people moving in that trajectory, to be unyielding at their momentum and not doubt themselves when times get tough? Dreams, goals and ambitions; those are the things we look forward to when times get tough, a dream that doesn’t play out when our eyes are closed but unfolds when our eyes scan the glowing screen of our comptuers while our fingers jump between the letters on the keyboard.
The search for your own dreams and goals can be as arduous as pursuing one can be. Some find it even before they first walk beneath the neon green Sather Gate; others still search for it between the layers of Yale blue mortarboards at Memorial Stadium. I, like many of you, am still searching for my raison d’etre. Traversing the beaten path between Evans and Stephens, I ponder about my dreams and goals and agonize about the lack of thereof. I tried many things to nudge myself toward a destination, but I still end up wandering around as if I were a freshman trapped in Dwinelle. Even if I don’t know what I am to do with this life I have, with the tools I have been honing in and outside of the classroom, I know what wonders having a dream can have.
I have seen people working tirelessly to give back to the community something they may have been blessed by in their lives. Others, despite what they study under the sun, still pursue, under the moonlight, art and expression, their sweat and tears consecrating the ground at Lower Sproul, Spieker Plaza, Hearst Gym, Dwinelle or Wurster. I have talked with truly inspired and passionate people who have pursued their dreams even if it means taking three majors in three years and sleeping three hours a night. I will not lie; their passion and dedication is inspiring, but it also sparks a slight sensation of envy within me. We as students and human beings need something to keep us going through the hard times, to inspire us to keep going forward and not look back. From the estimated 35,000 students who walk, study and live between Oxford and Piedmont, Bancroft and Hearst, many still wander around searching for their true callings, dreams, goals and ideals. And it isn’t easy — we expose ourselves to different experiences, and sometimes it may suit our fancy. Sometimes it may not excite us at all, and we return to square one, feeling more lost than we have felt before, questioning whether we can really successfully find what we’re looking for.
But it is the struggle for that dream, the constant exposure to novelty, new experiences, people, events and communities that truly allows us to see what suits our fancy. For some, it may be serving the community; others, exploration of the unknown, finding and crossing the frontiers of human knowledge or simply settling down and enjoying life’s simplicity one day at a time.
To all those who have found their dream, goal, ambition: Keep going. However long the road may be, keep going, for it is one thing that in the end can truly make us feel that our time on this Earth was worthwhile.
For those, like me, who still try to find our calling: We’re still alive, we still breathe. So with each breath, we should try to find something that can truly make us survive the grueling nights at our desks writing essays, reading research papers, debugging thousands of lines of code or solving complex equations for problem sets. Even if we don’t find it tomorrow, next week, month, semester or year, it will be worth the trouble.
Nghia-Piotr T Le is a third year at UC Berkeley.