A short story of what happened to me while packing:

As I unpack from college and begin packing for Denmark I have had a whirlwind of emotions. The un-pack and re-pack phenomenon brings out strange happenings. Saying farewell to a portion of ones life journey and embracing another. All you can expect is the unexpected when you find yourself idle and decide to commune with your feelings. It's frightening.

I say goodbye to dresses, picture frames, the multitudes of owls I have amasses over the years, etc. It's terribly materialistic (I am horrified to inform you of my material fetishism) but that's the ugly truth.

As I fold black shirt after grey shirt after black pants which will become the greyscale defining my Scandinavian wardrobe, I have moments of delight as I stand on the precipice of my new adventure! And simultaneous fear as the string of hanging elephants which graced my walls over the eight years of college and high school which I will leave behind hold a piece of me I am not sure I yet wish to part with.

And all this excitement and anticipation marks the catharsis which is moving on from college into the real world. I look at my packed suitcase with a sense of foreboding accomplishment.

Then it suddenly hits me: I didn't pack a single pair of underwear. Not one.

Is this the reality of four years of careful study, embodying to the best of my ability wholistic scholarship, to find myself 6,000 miles away without a single pair of panties?

A's in the hardest of theoretical courses, mastering the art of taking 5 dates to sorority formals completely undetected, finally discovering certain professors marital statuses, realizing the meaning of the acrostic "smh" which I've seen all over social media and pondered for months. ALL of this ALL to be strewn aside as I spend the first hours of my future life spending all my graduation money to buy overpriced Danish underpants.

Is the reality that post-grad life hangs so fragile in the balance of things?

Luckily I realized this now and have packed some underwear but the point remains: what is this strange purgatory? Between already lived life and life that awaits to be lived.

Concluding thought of the day: it's all contingent on remembering to pack your underwear.