Sophia White-

What is displacement? It can mean a lot of different things through the lens of science, psychology, and linguistics, but they all boil down to one big idea: being moved from a particular position where something else existed previously. At times, displacement can be intentional, at others, it occurs from natural change.

College, for example, is intentional and natural in a chaotic spiral. We put ourselves in these positions, yet there is always a natural displacement that comes with drastic changes in a person’s life. One of the major aspects of college is this feeling of displacement. Your entire being is pulled from place to place with new social interactions and trying on different personas becomes part of a weekly habit.

I have always thought that who I am revolves around the people who know and love me. I gravitate towards and latch onto people to define who I am. If you are my friend, then who does that make me? People are my motivation. However, the difficulty with this is that people are constantly in motion. They are constantly moved from place to place by natural and intentional motions, which makes it hard to track what makes me who I am. The forever-changing world is the force of my identity crisis and causes me to feel disconnected from myself. Being in a relationship with others forces you to take action. I am constantly moved by other people. Friends move me to take action and I move them just the same. Displacement is the natural occurrence of cause and effect in daily life. The distinction comes from whether that displacement is good or bad.

One thing I’ve noticed since coming to college is that even at large events filled with people I know, I still feel lonelier in a crowd of people than I do by myself in my dorm room. There’s something about feeling that everyone must know each other and no one will want to get to know you that triggers a light or flight response in your bones.

Loneliness sets in because everyone has their own friend group but you.

At the beginning of my college experience, I thought that there was an immense importance in finding people that mesh with who you are or finding your own group of people right away. My brain has created such associations between people and what groups they belong to, but in reality, it isn’t like that. The reality is that each person is an individual that can come to be part of a community and those individuals will continuously be switched from community to community. It is the natural migration of life. You will move from one group to the next and try to find familiarity in those groups, but when does this active motion stop? Does it ever stop?

The truth is it doesn’t stop, but it does eventually slow down. With the pace of life, through places like college, it will be easier to keep in pace with others. To create these lifelong bonds with the people who will be with you through major life events like your first internship, getting married, or your first child.

Things will continue to change and people will change too, but it will become more subtle. Through creating a community around yourself, you can find a place where things stay with you; more aptly put, your memories of people and places. Memories and nostalgia carry people through life and aid them in accepting the world’s constant change and re-positioning. Slowly, over this past month, I have become okay with the fact that I don’t need a strong, defined group to be happy. I am fine with being an individual without a group who ebbs and flows with other individuals. I am learning to be comfortable with myself and being alone with myself as much as anything.

I am still moving from place to place and it’s not within my control, but I accept that. Being alone with myself makes me realize that I do have company in my own person, if not with others. And I am capable of getting to know people and creating lifelong friendships. I am currently displaced, but I am not alone.

We are all displaced, but not alone. We have ourselves. We have acceptance. We find comfort in knowing ourselves and finding new ways to develop a thriving love for ourselves. Displacement is a truly complex feeling, but it is something that everyone feels in one way or another. With change comes good and bad.

I’ve always been told that college would be something good for me. Some of the best years of my life would be during college. This was a message given to me by the college students whom I knew through my father’s job. Yet, I saw them go through these complex emotions. They weren’t always convinced that it was something good for them, but they found comfort in each other and themselves.

It’s not simple to accept change, that is a fact of human nature. We do not tend to like it when things change around us. Due to this change of moving to college, we find ourselves displaced among a sea of peers. You may see people becoming large groups, but they are just as displaced. You do not need a group to feel better about this change going on. You need time with yourself. Then -and only then- can you build what you need: a community. And that takes time, but some of us already have one, are working on one, or have plenty of time to start. I believe that as social beings, we are capable of accepting our uncertainty and creating memories that will keep our hearts open for more changes to come.