- Eichel Davis
The College Journals: Rainy Days
I know it's been awhile since we lasted opened up this book.
I know we’ve let life get in the way of our little ritual. But no more. So crack open an Arnold Palmer, sit back, and lets go back to that place...back to The College Journals.
I was thinking very wishfully at a point. It wasn’t that I was lying, it was just that...I wanted to believe that life always gives more than it takes. And while that is certainly true in an overarching fashion, sometimes, some days, life just takes. It’s a sad sad reality yes, but we all know it to be true. No matter how many good days there are, no matter how much happy you encounter, life will give you your Rainy Days.
College really can feel like a bunch of rainy days tied together by a few fun nights and epic parties to keep us from becoming completely nihilistic. Between that big test, or that empty wallet, or those forgotten friendships, college can be a time of great stress. And for some wicked reason, it all seems to happen at once. One day, everything will be great. The bank account will have some cushion. Your grades will be flying high. Your friends by your side. Then the next day rent is due, the test grades come back, and you remember you haven’t talked to that person in months as they past you on the sidewalk, no words spoken between you.
I’ve always been the one to mourn lost friendships. I think we all do to a point. In 8th grade, we were gonna be best friends forever. We were going to be in each other’s wedding. We were going to always have each other. But now, no matter how much history we shared, no matter how much love was between us...we might as well be strangers, walking the lonely streets together.
The last time we spoke, I talked in little detail about the snakes, the non-dreamers, the others in your life that just don’t get it. And after the last few weeks, I realized something.
I underestimated them.
I underestimated their will to come after our sacred dreams, our hallowed visions, and our guarded fantasies of what life will be like. And while life will cause it to rain with its student debt, its lost loves, and its impossible test, it’s the setbacks on the road to your dreams that make it pour.
I’ve been told no so many times by people who quite frankly have no power to tell me so, no matter the power that their title gives them. They have no power to tell me ( or you) how we should create, write, edit, record, stitch, dance, or sing. They have no right over our dreams or our visions. Only we, the bold and brave souls dreaming of our American Dream, can change it. So it's important that we remind ourselves of that. The rainy days...they will come. They will persist. The naysayers, the cynics, the fallen dreamers, the puppets, the number-crunchers, they will always persist. The water will lap at our feet, and the winds will try to uproot us.
But no one can uproot our generation of innovators and trailblazers...except us.
We will indeed talk soon,
EICHEL | @EichelGDavis
