It Is Well With My Soul

Between one o'clock and three o'clock in the afternoon on Mondays, I do not have a class. At one, I usually go to the Union Drive Community Center - or UDCC as most call it - to have lunch with my boyfriend. It's a blissful break from a back-to-back classes day and I am so thankful to be able to spend this quality time with my man. Yet, it is the time I spend after lunch and before my three-ten calculus class that I relish the most on Monday afternoons like this one.
Today, Autumn has blown her crisp, fresh breath over campus, tugging unsuspecting citrine leaves loose from what has been their home for the spring and summer months. Presently, I lie on an uncomfortable, cold, metal bench beneath a scarlet canopy, which occasionally drops a tiny skydiver from its heights onto the ground or onto me. Each time, the diver glides gracefully to and fro until it gently meets its destination. Warm royal colors adorn the ground and clutter the grass until its emerald green can no longer be seen.
I marvel at these rich shades and my heart welcomes the general splendor of this season. Girls "click-clack" past in tall, European-style boots, flannel shirts, and scarves. The scent of their pumpkin-spice beverages and a distant hint of fire carries over to me on a gentle breeze. Stylish gentlemen stroll to class clad in camel-colored cardigans, leather loafers, and plaid button-downs. The rattle of dry leaves crescendos as a stronger gust of wind blows through and my shoulders tense as I fight a shiver. The old man who always challenges passing students to chess at the picnic table across the courtyard from me dawns a dirty-looking black stocking hat, a puffy gray sweatshirt, and fingerless gloves today, and his big, red boombox blares what seems to be the soundtrack of a horror movie as, periodically, a shrill scream sounds from it.
As I do most every Monday afternoon on this bench, I whip out my iPad, plug in my headphones, and browse Pinterest, dreaming of my uncertain future and treating the worries of today as if they don't exist. It matters not that I struggle daily with whether I am meant to be an engineer or a journalist. It matters not that I have a midterm in two days in a class I struggle with and stress over, often to the point of tears. It matters not that the American government is in shambles. It matters not that the values of the world as we know it are crumbling. It matters not that, in one short hour, I will be trapped within the four white walls of a classroom glazed entirely with layers of chalk dust, learning a subject that makes me feel half dead.
....At least, not right now, as the golden world around me ebbs and flows to the rhythm of the music in my ears and the foliage dies the most beautiful death.
I close my eyes for just a moment - this brilliant autumn moment - and I am convinced that nothing can shake the peace my soul feels right now.