Wasted time?

I often reflect on my 4 years spent at UCSB, and typically shake my head in disgust for "wasting" so much time during such an important developmental period of my life. I could have been learning from the smartest, developing my intelligence, competing with future world leaders, and building valuable connections. Instead, I squandered it by enjoying the beach mindset, trying to "excel" at parties, and generally spending more time on myself than necessary. Sometimes I try to shift the blame to others (or simply justify the decisions I made) by telling myself that they made me think that such things were important. It's hard not to resent myself and others sometimes.

But today while I was writing a reflection paper, I realized that I should be very thankful for that influence, for the influence that led me to question what the most important aspect of life was. Is it success? Accomplishment? All of these things are meaningless in the long run (given that in the long run, we're dead). It was this type of questioning that was the seed of my happiness fixation, for which I am extremely thankful. I truly believe that after much searching, I've found the true meaning of life, and have discovered the best way to live it (regardless of whether I actually execute it...)

So maybe it wasn't wasted time at all. Maybe I need to be more thankful for my friends who taught me selfish enjoyment. Their intuition was that there was something deeper there, and indeed there is.