Photography by Jaicee Almond
When I was little, I dreamed of growing up to be a horse trainer. I had it all planned — exactly how I was going to purchase our neighbor’s property and redesign it into stables and pastures. I spent endless afternoons sketching it all out. But today, those plans sit in a box in the corner of my closet, all but forgotten. The passage of time dimming that dream. And isn’t that how it is for most of us? As life moves forward, we define new goals and vocations as we ourselves change. We smile back on our childhood aspirations and marvel at how differently life is turning out. It’s a little like hopscotching, jumping from square to square, always needing to move forward even if we don’t know what the next box holds.
Where we’ve come from and where we’re going in many ways define who we are in the present. Our identity is rooted in time. Time past, never to be returned, as well as the time to come that will change us as we live through it.
The concept of timeline is what this issue of The Point is all about.
We ask some in our campus community what their childhood dreams were and how those may have changed. We also examine technology and how our devices are revising our concept of time and raising new expectations. We time travel through the world of cinema, seeing how motion pictures have progressed and are impacting us today.
We turn our attention to relationships, and the role memory plays in establishing and maintaining those. We take you to the bike trails surrounding our campus, and peer in on the community that is formed among those riders on two wheels. We have the definitive bucket list of the things to do while you are a Biola student.
In other stories, we pause to take a look at some life-changing moments: the significance of wedding proposals and how those are uniquely meaningful to each couple; stepping out into the world after graduation and discerning where to go next. We also introduce you to some students among us who are experiencing a very different life journey because of physical disabilities that nonetheless do not define them. Finally, we face up to the reality that time is limited, and explore the emotions that surface when the loss of a loved one touches our daily routines.
Time is a funny thing. It passes at the same rate, whether we feel it is fast or slow. Whether we’re hopscotching with confidence or with uncertainty, our feet are still moving us ahead. The time slipping by is the story our lives are becoming. Look back and see how the person you were has changed. Look ahead and consider where that evolution may be taking you. But don’t forget to come back to the present, where your life is waiting to be lived, full of trials and triumph.
