Recently, I have begun to feel a change, hard to describe precisely, but it feels like the tumblers in an unknown lock have moved into place, and is opening, or maybe the better word is unfolding.
One of the things I had struggled with inside myself was my experience at Berkeley. I had worked so hard to get there, and was so happy while I was there, that when circumstances changed so that I could not stay, and had to leave in the middle of my senior year, I blamed myself, and thought of myself as a failure, even though the circumstances that changed had very little to do with me.
Joe and I recently watched a documentary about Berkeley, called “At Berkeley”, that brought back a lot of memories. On the whole, the documentary was 4 hours of extremely articulate people speaking, in that fluid and verbose way that people from Berkeley do, and so I cannot recommend this documentary to people in general, since it will be received about as well as a 4 hour insurance seminar, but for anyone who went to Berkeley, it will be a powerful reminder of just how intense and concise speech can be.
For the first time in, well, I guess ever, I finally let myself see that experience in a different light, that I hadn’t failed, and finally I could allow myself to see the truth about my time there, that being that I was a very lucky person for having gone there. The experience changed me profoundly, for the better, the people I met changed me for the better, and the things I learned while I was there completely changed how I look at the world.
It’s a little embarrassing to realize that I have been foolish and childish enough to carry a millstone sized grudge for so long, about something that was so obviously a wonderful experience.
I don’t know why I couldn’t let myself see this sooner.