Last Friday I took my girlfriend back to the first place I ever found myself: my college campus. Everything looked the same, but different. The same roads with shiny new facilities. The same bars with new logos. I found myself looking at me then and now the same way. Same heart, different outfit. I still wore pink and tried to do my hair back then. 

I remember the day I walked on that campus 18 years ago. I had never been there before. College wasn’t the plan, but I ended up there anyway after my Mom made me an intimidating spreadsheet. It calculated my lifetime earnings and projected they would be 50% lower if I didn’t go to college. Out of the fear of God, my Mother, and money - I went to Penn State. 

I remember the last day as a student, too, almost 18 years ago this month and the fear of a pending graduation. On graduation day, I had nothing figured out. I didn’t have that good job everyone said would be waiting for me. Just the deadline of starting to pay off my loans. I remember crying on the couch in my cap and gown worried everything would fall apart.

I wish I could go back and talk to them in that dark living room. I wouldn’t deliver any warnings or ruin any surprises. I guess I would just tell them not to bet on the bad thing happening. I would tell them they can bet on better days. 

I started that particular chapter of my life all those years ago believing that everything that happened to me was just good luck. That’s how my family always talked about anything good that happened to them. “I don’t want to jinx myself,” was code for “I don’t want to get attached to believing good things happen to me.” 

It built the idea in my head that “safe” meant staying as still as possible. I lived as if I was teetering on a steep cliff. Just one wrong move would fundamentally alter my direction.  I was just one misstep away from losing it all - people, money, and jobs.

In fairness, I had evidence. I watched people I admire march through hard moments and fall apart. In my own lifetime of experiences from that campus to the desk I occupy today, I have broken too. I lost the money. I lost the people I loved more than anything. I lost my job. 

I lost it all a hundred times and 101 times, what came next was a little better than my limited vision would let me believe. I didn’t just learn to lean, I learned to leap into the unknown. In that lunge I found something a whole lot more beautiful than a precarious living. I get to be tired in the pursuit of a challenge of my own choosing. 

I don’t envy the graduates walking across stages this month. I know things feel more uneasy than ever. You probably feel like you’re on the edge of losing it all just like I did all those years ago. You don’t know what tomorrow brings. 

After all these lifetimes I’ve lived, the truth is? Neither do we. All of us - degreed or not - walk the proverbial stages that take us from one big decision to the next uncertain. Everyone carries the weight of trying to weigh a million options. When you’re making big choices, it’ll always feel like the right decision isn’t obvious. 

That’s because there’s no right answer. There’s only a choice you get to make every day. To live wondering when the bad thing will happen or bet on better days.