No Good Times, but Good Experiences

" A personal revolution is more important than a social one"

A few days ago, I received an e-mail from my old college, Trinity Foudation Studies. In the e-mail were pictures of current year students having fun. I miss those days. I consider my year in Trinity the best year I had in education. Drama classes, enjoyable tutorials, friendly and sincere lecturers, special events, and most of all, close friends whom I spent most of that year trying to find. Now? University... Sigh... So many people, but so few willing to make friends. Everyone in tutorials seem to be interested in only tutorial work. They just come and go. No one wants to make new friends. There is almost nothing in uni that brings its diverse students together as friends.

I look at the pictures, and I look back at my one and a half year at uni, and there was a longing within me for times like college year. Uni seemed so dry, so eventless, so empty. I can't remember any social event organised by university which I truly enjoyed, unlike Trinity, no Drama Week, no Big Noise, no Slave Auction, no fun. Good friends are scarce, good times almost do not exist. Then I asked myself how would I define a "good time"? Is a good time several moments of exhiliration, several moments of giving most of myself into emotions, or several moments of enjoying the fact that I have so many friends? It could be one of the three, or one of the many definitions that I failed to come up with, but I figured that what I should treasure more than good times are good experiences. I might even equate a good experience with a good time if I didn't think that good experiences are more valuable.

So what is a good experience? To me, a good experience is defined by its after effects. For an experience to be good, we have to come out of the experience intellectually or spiritually (both aren't much different to me) enriched. We must come out with a stronger, wiser, more nimble, more flexible and a more open mind. Have I gotten wiser since the day I left Trinity til the moment I am typing this post? I have to give that answer a "hell yeah". This means that although there haven't been many good times at uni, the past 18 months were filled with good experiences. They weren't filled with social events, there were no amateur student plays, no college students dancing on the streets, but there was lots of quietness, tranquility, calmness, and lots of enlightening moments. As I came close to filling the emptiness of the past by introspection, the process was accelerated when I came across someones blog which was where I got the above quote from. I still think that I didn't have much fun at uni so far, but I know that I have evolved spiritually, and for that, I am no less, if no more, happy and joyful.