~John F. Kennedy
So, we all have times that we can reminisce about, right? Times when we were obviously younger. Times when we in all likelihood were more innocence and naive, and felt better about the future, like it was all wide open and the possibilities were promising, and the future was something to look forward to, rather than dread.
Now, when I look back at the past, there were times like that indeed, and I feel blessed to have had them. Sometimes, I am reminded of them when I watch my son go through a day with seemingly boundless joy. He is still young enough that it does not take all that much to make him happy, and that is truly a blessing! In fact, when you think about it, is there not possibly an argument to be made that kids are closest to the sheer happiness of living in the moment that Buddhists and other philosophies often speak of? Is that not true contentment?
Yet, we lose that too often when we get older. I can remember when it was that easy to be happy but, truth be told, I would have no idea how to return to such a state, where happiness comes that easily. Nowadays, it feels like a lot more work and involvement to reach that state, and then the happiness seems to not to last.
However, there are moments beyond childhood when we reach happiness, although at the time, while we are going through it, we might not recognize it as such. Many people view high school as their golden age. While there were certainly some good memories and experiences that I had in high school, by and large, it was not a time that was so good to me that I would relive or revisit them if it was within my power to do so.
On the other hand, though, my earliest college days at Bergen Community College (BCC) was such a time, in retrospect.
I was a young man with a whole lot of idealism and energy, and a sense of purpose. I wanted to make my mark in the world in some positive way, to make the world a better place. At the time, I still believed that solutions to making this world a better place could be achieved through political means.
It was an exciting time, not just in my life, but in general. For the first time in twelve years, a Democrat was about to occupy the White House when I first entered BCC, and expectations were high. I had a sense (likely a false sense, admittedly), that things could and would get better.
The music scene was phenomenal, honestly likely the best in my lifetime. The Seattle bands were still fully merging to become the powerhouse that they have become, although they were almost there. Plus, there were a lot of other great bands and great music out there, too. It really was incredible! U2 came out with what I still think was likely the best album of the nineties with
Achtung Baby. the Red Hot Chili Peppers had come out with an album that was close, with
Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Nirvana had
Nevermind, Pearl Jam had
Ten, Soundgarden had
Bad Motorfinger, Alice in Chains had
Facelift, Guns 'n Roses had
Use Your Illusion 1 and 2, and Metallica had their self-titled album. There were other emerging musical acts, as well. The Smashing Pumpkins were releasing some great stuff, and they would release their pinnacle double-album,
Meloncollie and the Infinite Sadness, a few years later. Blind Melon, the 4 Non-Blonds, the Stone Temple Pilots (some people back then thought that they were a blatant rip off of Pearl Jam, and referred to them as the Clone Temple Pilots), the Spin Doctors, and the Black Crows were all on the rise.
Exciting times, and it felt to me back then that we were on the edge of changes. The music I was listening to was new, largely replacing Metallica and other metal bands, and it had a more activist bent to it. It felt a little bit like certain things were finally being taken seriously, such as environmental issues like recycling. This was buttressed by the other kids (and that is what we really were, for the most part) at the college, who seemed to be more free spirits than most of my classmates in high school had ever been.
One of the first things that I did upon entering Bergen Community College was to join the Environmental Club. Soon, I was one of the most active members, and was elected Secretary, then eventually Vice-President, and finally, President. In the pictures below, I was serving as President of the BCC Environmental Club, and looked decidedly unlike all of those much more sophisticated kids (or so it seemed to me at the time) when I first came to Bergen. They had worn Native American sweatshirts, many of them, and all of them had a style of dress that I knew put me to shame. They also all seemed to have a style about them which I envied, and they had cool things like the plastic coffee mugs that the Environmental Club sold at the cafe, and did cool things like play hacky sack and other such strange activities. Most of them also were far more familiar with the cool music scene than I was, being mostly a metal head, with some punk leanings. It all felt like an awakening for me, my own personal renaissance, if you will.
And, as already mentioned here in some earlier posts, there was a girl that I was very, very interested in and, truth be told, am quite sure she was also interested in me. But, being rather dumb and painfully shy, I let opportunity after opportunity pass until, eventually, it was too late, and she hooked up with someone else.
Eventually, I replaced her as Vice-President starting in January of 1994, and was very sad to see her go. But 1994 was a year where I was still young and impressionable, and where a lot of cool things (and some not so cool things) occurred. In fact, 1994 was such a strange, yet incredibly pleasant year on many levels, that I think I will devote a future blog entry all about it.
In any case, I just wanted to write again about those days, when enthusiasm came easily, and when I still possessed a youthful energy and naivete about the world, and my place in it. Those were really cool times, and sometimes, I really miss them.
This came up because I recently got back in touch with a friend from the Bergen days (although he and I knew each other only starting late in 1994, well after the times that I was just writing about, when I was still new to Bergen, during the spring semester of 1993).
We met and saw one another in person for the first time in probably fifteen plus years on Saturday, May 23rd. I had my son with me, and he was interested in getting my son to experience his train set, a hobby that he had shared with his late dad.
My son had been very much into trains a few years ago, but his interest in them had clearly been waning since. He was mildly interested in picking it up again when I recently told him about this elaborate, room-sized train set that my friend possessed, but after an hour or so of playing with it, he seemed to lose interest. I kind of understood that this signaled something, and that any hopes that this might spark a renewed interest in trains was no longer there, if indeed it ever had been there in the first place.
Here was a training exercise where we helped people wade across a rope obstacle. We each had our turn, as I recall, although that could be a mistaken impression. You will notice that, for whatever the reason, I am not being helpful at all, and remain solidly in the background, away from everyone else.
I look angry here, although honestly, I am not entirely sure why. Don't think I was actually angry, but apparently had a way of looking it often, based on the amount of times people would ask me, "What's wrong?"
There I am again, for some reason wearing sweatpants, with a crown of golden hair basking in the sun, and a whole lot of pounds lighter, to boot. Most people thought that I was really, really skinny at the time, which I guess I was. This was taken during the Leadership Weekend for Bergen Community College, and was at a retreat which was only really about twenty minutes or so from where I lived, in a beautiful, wooded spot, during the fall colors.
I added this picture mostly because of the cast of characters that I know there, but whom I have mostly forgotten about since. On the left is the professor who mediated the weekend, and he kind of bore a resemblance to Karl Marx. He even wore a hat sporting a hammer and sickle on it at some point, as I recall.
I do not believe that this had anything to do with Leadership Weekend at all. But there I am all the way to the right, with my arms wrapped around my then girlfriend and future wife (now ex-wife), with a beard. A few other friends are there as well, although the three people all the way to the left (excluding the tall guy) are people who I do not remember at all, truth be told.
Finally, here are some pictures of that train set in the basement of that friend that I visited. It was a more elaborate model train set than I think I had ever seen before, and was indeed very impressive! My son seemed to enjoy it, too.
