You’ve heard it a million times, I’m sure – that old cliché that reminds us that you never realize how much you love something until you lose it. I would like to edit that a little for my own personal uses to say that you never realize how much you love something until you might lose it. How often do we take things for granted until something just threatens to take it away from us? How many of the wonderful things in our lives are still in our lives because they were once threatened and we fought to hold onto them?
I am ashamed to admit that there was a time when I didn’t want to go to school. I couldn’t fathom the idea of sitting in boring lectures for four more years just to get a piece of paper that says “Yay, you just sat through four years of boring lectures!” What a terrible attitude!
But here I am, starting my second to last semester of my university career and thinking about everything that I’ve learned over the past four years, and I realize how blessed I have been. That piece of paper I will get in a few months (hopefully…) means so much more to me now. It’s not just something that congratulates me for completing what I had to do, it’s a symbol of the many, many things I have experienced and learned while here at BYU, both in the classroom and out. It’s a representation of the lasting friendships I have made, the opportunities classes have given me, the hours spent volunteering and participating on campus. It’s a reminder of the sacrifices others have made so that I could be here, so that I could get an education that will enable me to go out and make the world just a little better.
I have to confess, though, that this change of heart actually came about because I suddenly faced the possibility of having to postpone graduation. The world has a way of bringing reality into focus exactly when you’re starting to think that those lovely, dream-like fields of pansies are where life is truly taking you, and it’s always a shock to find out that they aren’t. But like I said earlier, there’s nothing like a threat to make you hold on to something you cherish, even if you don’t realize until that moment that you do cherish it.
President Hinckley told us to get an education. He said, “You need all the education you can get… sacrifice anything that is needed to be sacrificed to qualify yourselves to do the work of the world” (Way to Be, 25).
I’m going to fight for what matters to me, no matter the sacrifice.
