A personal statement topic: a summer drive and no destination. This is the subject of a vivid new essay, capturing the windows-down freedom of eighteen and the social, atmospheric chance of each turned corner.
Looking back – or, looking down at it presently – it is hard for the grown-up to discern any purpose to this meandering rite: the circling of streets, music filtering through the thick June air, a browned bare foot propped out the window into the wind. And yet, it is not merely getting to know the lay of the land, the organization of a town grid, the disconnected paths to and from familiar sites known only from the childhood vantage of the back seat. It is a simple pure-hearted surrender to chance, an expectant surrendering, to see what comes along, who is out, which paths will cross!
Is there not some worthy practice inherent here, some approach to the world one would do well to emulate against all those organizing constraints of adulthood?
My young writer, hair steaming across her lines of sight, is entering into college buoyed by camaraderie and expectant. There is no finer mindset for success, resiliency and, truly, joy at any age.
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