Today, Nov. 17, is by all accounts an unspectacular day in the calendar year. But it, like each passing day now, is momentous for us seniors, for it brings us another pace closer to adjourning our undergraduate experiences.

It’s very difficult to write about aging and growing up — about the unfolding of a life, essentially — without falling back on clichés and aphorisms, without descending into bathos. This is because writers, artists, musicians, philosophers, etc. have treated the subject exhaustively since, well, forever. And, more damning to the cause, most of these thinkers have cognitive chops that seriously dwarf my own, which is why adding anything new, noteworthy or the least bit incisive to the study of our lives is so formidable a task.

So I’ll begin here with the acknowledgement that any 21 year old attempting to espouse a philosophy of life — and through a college newspaper column nonetheless — doubtless would and should stand accused of hubris. I realize (and realize anew each day) that the sum of my life experiences amounts to precious little knowledge, and I’m sure that somewhere someone further along in years is reading this and chortling at my presumption to speak of the human condition. Indeed, it’s hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy for a college student — someone who six months ago had to rely on an intermediary to buy him beer — bemoaning the loss of time.

But I hate having to even make this concession, because it validates the notion that the only people who can speak of life’s transience are those who have crossed a certain age threshold, which, in my mind, is nonsense. People who have lived longer may be better qualified to speak to the meaning or evolution of a life, but all of us, no matter our age, can grasp the fragility of our condition. Tragedy, terminal illness and old age of course sharpen this awareness, but so does the slightest recognition of passing time. Feeling alive, I would say, is simply a matter of paying attention.

Which is why I feel prompted to write today, as graduation encroaches but before it gets too close, about the necessary labor of sustaining this awareness now and beyond college.

I’ve always been troubled by the idea of growing up — namely, the contention that we ever do, in fact, grow up. For us students, these are the years when we supposedly “come of age,” but this too seems to me a gross misnomer. We are always “coming of age,” and to put temporal boundaries on the process is, in a way, to deny the possibility of growth later in our lives. Still, there is something dizzying about facing the end of college, probably because the decisions we make now about our futures, though they may not alter our lives drastically in the short term, carry with them a measure of finality we’ve never before reckoned with.

Up through college, our lives progress along near-identical tracks. A few of us buck convention and take time off or study abroad during or after high school, but most of us advance in the same linear manner: elementary school, middle school, high school, college. Like products on an assembly line, we pass through all the requisite stations and then we’re sent off, ready for consumption.

It’s easy to coast through life in this fashion, obliging by some preconceived notion of what a life’s progression should look like, and it’s certainly possible to find happiness and meaning without paying extraordinary attention to the minutiae of our lives (though, I would add, it’s also probably harder).

But what’s dangerous about living this way is that it makes it far too easy for us to think of our lives as abstractions, to have some vague conception of a life’s trajectory (college, job, wife/husband, kids) and to mark the milestones rather than savor what’s really important and holy: the minutes, the hours and days, the monotony, the grind. If this seems counterintuitive it’s only because we’ve gotten used to viewing our lives in broad strokes and have a harder time discerning the smaller things, the finer things — like the hammering of one’s heart or the glint in lovers’ eyes.

I’m afraid this all may sound abstract and, coming from a fellow student, preachy, so let me make clear that I’m not indicting anyone here nor am I holding myself up as a model to follow. Not at all.

My hope in writing is simply to spur all students, but especially us seniors, to recognize how extraordinary it is to be at this juncture in life. It pains me to listen to friends recounting horror stories about crying over the LSATs or sleeping in the library to finish work — to see them stressing out about papers and prelims, summer jobs and résumés, while their days here slip by. Whenever I catch myself similarly frazzled, I try to remember how privileged I am to be a student, to have as my only responsibilities learning, reading and writing, to be able to look ahead at my future and see it blank, waiting to be filled in.

Thanksgiving is still a week away, but really, we don’t need a holiday to start giving thanks.