"To live is to be slowly born." -Antoine De Saint-Exupery

On the last day of my high school senior trip to San Diego, we had a class bonfire during which people volunteered their closing thoughts (people tend to be pretty chatty when an end is near). I vaguely remember remnants of words that were exchanged that night; I distinctly remember one comment. I'm not friends with every single person sitting around this fire. None of us are. But I'm still going to miss every single person in some capacity. Of course the profound friendships, but also the comfort of simply seeing some of you in passing in the halls. Each person, though at varying degrees, was a part of her high school experience. If not a friend, a friendly face.

I often go for walks or runs around my neighborhood. Being somewhat of a person of routine, I tend to go on the same days at the same times. This usually means that I see the same families, the same cars parked in the same places, the same dogs being walked by the same people. We wave. We smile. And over time, we've grown to expect one another's presence. Though I don't know anything about these entities past what I see during those walks, there's a certain comfort in sharing that fleeting in-the-moment experience.

I cannot enjoy anything unless I am fully and completely in the moment. I would venture to guess that this basic tenant is true for most of us. And being in the moment means engaging with those around us. Because at that point, despite all the other things going on in our lives, that moment, that experience, is a shared one.

Today one of my close friends was regaling me on stories from a recent trip to Switzerland. On one of her nights there, she went to a barbecue with an English-speaking friend and all his friends...who only spoke German. They seemed really fun and funny and exciting. I was surrounded by people but still felt alone and empty. Not being able to understand what they were saying and just be funny back was distancing. That's the "barrier" that is associated with language. Not being able to comprehend language blocks us from being able to fully share the same experience.

Last week, a New York Times op-ed piece provided me with perhaps the most useful piece of post-college advice I have ever received. The author explains, "College grads are sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to." Spoiler alert, he writes that the purpose of life is not to find yourself, but to lose yourself.

For me, this means losing myself in my day to day activities. Being continually in the moment with the people around me. Spending more time doing than thinking. In the time soon after college graduation, it's so easy to lose ourselves in thought. We've been told time and time again that the world is at our fingertips and we spend so much time thinking about those opportunities that ironically, those opportunities fly right past us. Of course we should have goals. Of course we should have big dreams. But those dreams don't come true by just our thinking about them.

A couple months ago, I received deep advice from a leader at my company. Whenever I'm concerned about something big, those things that gnaw at my mind, I open up my calendar to exactly six months in the future and write down my problem on that day. Then, I stop over-thinking it. If when six months rolls around, the issue is still bothering me, I know it's a problem and that it needs my deep thought. She loses herself in her immediate experiences and genuinely tries to make them pleasant and successful before she allows herself to give up.

We've got to let ourselves escape into our experiences. To get lost in them. Because if we don't give ourselves a chance to be lost, there's a chance we won't find ourselves either.