Fresh

I was out running errands this morning, when, as coming around a corner in Bryan, it hit me. It was the fresh smell that comes after a rain, one like the little shower we had an hour or so earlier. It came in through the AC vents, and just as I was beginning to appreciate it's pleasing aroma, I saw the distant thunderheads and deep blue clouds moving in from the south. Everything brightened in that moment for me. I rolled down the window to get a better smell of the freshness, and my mind began to roll back.

It's fitting, for me at least, that the first day of school for Aggie and Blinn students here in BCS begins with rain. My whole first semester was filled with rain. It seemed that every home game brought rain. But I was young and didn't care. I was free, and I used that freedom to stand in the rain with 80,000 other nuts and yell our lungs out. Close to half that 80,000 would be college students like I was, experiencing a newness and freshness to life. New doors open, new relationships being explored, an identity still ripe for the molding. I had dreams then. Dreams of family and jobs, and of changing the world. I was eager and ready to see the impact I could have. We would watch the promising Aggie Football Team dominate every team that dared step onto Kyle Field. We would watch as national powerhouse Nebraska, a recent National Champ, challenged us. But they hadn't counted on a freshman, a guy who went to my Fish Camp, named Jamar Toombs, who redefined what a college running back was. We watched as he carried 5-6 'Huskers for twenty yards and a touchdown. We saw a limitless future, for that team and for ourselves.

But Toombs had difficuties. A&M stopped winning. Bonfire fell. Dreams died. 9-11 changed the world in a way none of could have foreseen. We graduated and entered a cynical world that resisted our youthful fire and hope. Many of us gave in to cynicism. We were told 'That won't work' enough that we believed it. We gave up. And we fit in.

We became stale.

I am sure that most, if not all, students setting foot on their campus for the first time have a fresh view of life, a hope of better things. They want to make an impact, they want to change things.

I don't want to be their obstacle. I remember too vividly the elder folk that squashed my dreams, but not well enough those that supported them. Yet I find myself being the cynic, the negative. The stale and dreamless.

If you are a college student reading this- I challenge you to explore, to test, to live. Don't settle for our "No, it won't work," and don't EVER settle for "That's good enough." The world has enough sleepwalkers, don't join their ranks.

There is hope, though, for us. We sleepers have our moments. They come in the scent of rain on the air, the cool of the Fall in the wind, the notes of a long forgotten song that once made us dream. We're driving in our car, and we catch these moments, and we remember what it meant to be young and free and alive, with our futures and our dreams before us. In that moment, we can choose to ground ourselves in that moment with thoughts of taxes, and jobs and responsibilities--or we can dream again. Remember that we wanted to be more, to be better. We can reclaim 'fresh.'

I believe there is still hope for big dreams. Dreams of people uniting, seeking that Ultimate Dream, that Unseen One. Dreams of one generation waking another, joining together in a pursuit of something great.

In my car, the window rolled down to let the fresh rain scent wash over me, I remembered what it meant to be young. To dream, to break the walls of cynicism and hope again. I am charged with leading some of that generation of college students who still have the dream of changing the world. I must dream again. I must be 'fresh.'

Won't you join me?