Charlie Brown once said that happiness is finding a pencil. This may sound simple, but in reality it’s anything but.

After four years here and 22 in the world at large, I’ve come to realize that its simplicity is really cloaked in more complex terms. It is difficult to figure out that simple things actually do make you happy. I’m not suggesting you scale back your ambitions, but I am trying to question whether success yields the joy you anticipated once you do achieve it. Happiness sort of surrounds you like your shadow; you can see it, but you can’t be in it. It is something that I’ve long chased, but have never quite found or stumbled upon.

In going through my own mental montage of the past four years and how my mindset has slowly evolved, I’ve concluded that there were many times I was happy, enjoying whatever I was immersed in at the moment. I just didn’t realize I was. Perhaps the reason why we can’t see that we are happy is because we are too busy being happy. I haven’t felt a certain rush of excitement, the kind you experienced when school let out or when you went on vacation over the summer, for example, since I was a kid. It makes me wonder whether the process of growing up doesn’t let us enjoy the ride.

In hindsight, I’m coming to realize that I enjoyed the times I labored in obscurity in the library at night, writing a paper or studying for a test. It was that kind of night when no one was watching that I molded myself into the person that I am and where I discovered a new world of knowledge unbeknownst to me. I learned that the process is just as important as the outcome. What is there to enjoy at the end if you haven’t been able to appreciate the journey along the way? This question looms heavily in my mind. Oddly, most of the things I never believed would make me happy at the time, in the end, actually did.

What I’m going to miss most about college is going to track practice and going to meets. It really is a privilege to go to a college for a meet, compete and then hang out with your friends while basking in the sun. It truly is, though at the time you can never see it for the simplicity it is worth, because you are chasing an elusive personal best. In the end, you will not remember the meet for how well you competed, but for what a beautiful day it was. I was foolish, not for competing less than I could have, but for not appreciating the opportunity to enjoy a time and place for what it was really worth.

I assumed the goals and achievements that I worked hard to attain were the things that I would take the most satisfaction in. And while they do make me happy, they can’t be the only things that ultimately fill me with satisfaction. I had hoped that my achievements would radically transform me, like asking a genie to grant you a wish. In the end, these achievements, while certainly valuable, didn’t fundamentally change the person I was (and still am). Perhaps certain things you expect to be exciting, in the end, really aren’t.

After four years, my happiness really does fit into the size of a pencil. None of the flashy or glamorous things I did really filled me with the satisfaction that the smaller and seemingly inconsequential things did. I thought I needed complex things to make me content, but while it’s easy to look at the simple things staring at you all the time, it’s harder to see what they are worth.

At graduation, I’ll get to hear words of wisdom from some person I’ve never laid eyes on in my college career. But I like to think that the wisdom I have cultivated along the way is greater than anything some stranger will tell me at the end of the journey.