By Daphne Chen

Sometimes my friends say I’m a bit of a Daphne Downer. I’m always the one at parties to bring up things like “You guys, this is the last birthday we’re going to celebrate together!” or “You guys, next year at this time we’re going to be across the country!”

I just can’t help myself from saying these things recently. Approaching graduation feels like finishing the last chapter of a book that I can’t ever read again, a book I would desperately like to relive occasionally, so I won’t ever forget it. But high school only happens once. Embarrassing moments, beautiful moments, horrible moments – they only happen once. Unfortunately, I feel paralyzed knowing that we can remember these times, but we can never relive them.

I’m afraid that I will forget. Like a book you can only read once, I am afraid I will forget the characters’ names. The funny parts. The sad moments. The profound ones.

For some reason, I’ve always struggled to find “happiness” because I used to think it was the meaning of life – to be happy. And I thought of it as this long-lasting, satisfied contentment, that one day, maybe I’d have the perfect job, a cozy home, a husband and family and it would just turn like a switch – I’d be happy.

But I wasn’t happy most of my time in high school. I was most often stressed, more often depressed, scared, jealous. Worried. Confused. Wondering why some people were always smiling, why they always looked happy, how they did it. I always felt happy with I was with my friends or doing something I enjoyed, but when I was alone again, why did I always feel sad again? Why could I never hold onto that happiness?

But what I never realized is that I can’t – I shouldn’t – expect a lasting happiness right now. I think about it like this:

Whether you believe in some form of afterlife, or simply believe that death means death, either way, you still believe in eternity – eternity in heaven or hell, or eternity in death, while the Earth moves on and civilizations turn into dust and new ones rise again.

In eternity, you have forever to be happy, or forever to be sad, or you have forever to simply be dead, to not exist.

So what truly matters, I think, is not the long run – you have forever to experience the long run. What matters are the smallest, briefest moments of this life, those snatches of time, those ephemeral split seconds when you feel that rush of joy. That surge of pure elation. That unbounded, limitless, perfect feeling of happiness, which you will never experience again after it passes.

That is what makes a life worthwhile. Moments.

So maybe that’s why I keep feeling the urge to remind my friends, “This is the last time”, or “Next year it won’t be the same”. I just don’t want them to forget what we had. I don’t want them to forget our happiness. I hold those moments so tenderly in my hands because I feel like a slight twinge would fracture it, but no longer do I need to clutch at it with white knuckles, trying to grasp at my momentary happiness so it won’t melt through my fingers. As bittersweet as it is, I know my happiness will come and go. But that’s what makes it meaningful.

A couple of weeks ago I was lying on the top of the West dome (sorry, CMSW police) with some friends at nighttime.

It was a perfect night. The sky was clear, the stars were bright like little pushpins. A breeze pushed our hair around. We put our heads together in a circle and linked arms, talking about nothing and everything, feeling at the same time like both an irreplaceable part of the universe as well as an insignificant one.

We looked up at the stars and over Coppell, a silent, quiet city. Our home. It was beautiful.

I thought, “I am so happy.”

And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t worried about the moment passing. About forgetting. About missing everyone and everything last year. That moment, I bid goodbye to Coppell, to high school, to my childhood, to The Sidekick, to old friends and old memories.

For the first time in a long time, I was happy in that tiny yet infinite moment.

I closed my eyes for a moment, and I was happy forever.