I ran into one of my professors in the halls the other day. As I turned the corner, our eyes met. His eyebrows rose as he tilted his head slightly, denoting a slight sense of surprise. The man is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom, embodied in the human equivalent of Flash from Zootopia.

“What are you still doing on campus?” he inquired, a low chuckle rumbling from deep within him. “Aren’t you sick of school?”

“I guess not.” I replied.

It’s been a week and a half since I graduated from my college. For the most part, the campus has fallen silent as students packed up and moved out in a mass exodus. A majority of the student body has headed back home. A few remain for work or for summer classes. The only others around are the faculty and staff, milling about the campus, running to this appointment or that.

There isn’t much space for a graduated senior at their college. Makes sense, I suppose. After walking across the stage and getting a diploma, it would make sense to call that chapter of life done and over with.

And yet, I remain.

In the classic movie, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock finds himself in a similar circumstance as many former college students – back at his parents’ house and unsure of an answer to the unrelenting question of what he wants to do with his life. During the first few minutes of the film, Benjamin spends a good deal of time simply floating in his parents’ pool – an action analogous to his fear of committing to a single way of living.

While the audience may not be able to directly relate to the direction the film takes action-for-action, they can resonate with the sense of aimless floating that he experiences after he leaves the structured rigor of college, suddenly being thrust into the great unknown expanse of the rest of his life.

At least with school, there was a goal for which to strive. Now, there’s not a single goal that people seem to be living for anymore. We are given the keys. We are left alone.

There! You’ve graduated! You’re on your own. Fend for yourself!

A similar sentiment cropped up in me as, there in the hallway, my professor asked the same question that Benjamin Braddock so dreaded.

“So, what do you want to do with your life?”

As I stood there sharing some of my post-grad plans with my professor, he nodded, listening. When I expressed concern regarding what concentration I should pursue for my MDiv, he laughed softly.

“Are you a fan of jazz?” he asked.

“Sure. I listen to it on occasion.”

“Well,” he started, “I think life with God is like jazz. There are parts of each piece that are distinctive which need to happen for it to be considered complete.”

“But,” he noted, “there’s a lot of improvisation that goes on between the beginning and the end. But we’ll get to the end eventually. God is still sovereign.”

“So what I hear you saying,” I paused, “is that my conceptual understanding of and subscription to limited providence needs to find a practical outlet in my own life as well.”

He coughed. “No. What I’m saying is study what you want. If your prayer is to glorify God, then I doubt that God will ignore such a request.”

He paused to crack a smile.

“But seriously – you’re a graduate of the youth ministry program? Who are you talking to, using that vocabulary set anyways? Chill.”

We laughed.

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 movie in which Andy Dufresne is sentenced to two life sentences for a crime he didn’t commit. While in prison, Andy befriends Red, another inmate, who tells him about the phenomenon of institutionalization – where prisoners who finished serving long sentences cannot figure out how to function in the outside world.

The notion of the familiar, paired with the limited amount of choices on how to live well given a certain set of circumstances, is comforting in light of overwhelming freedom. Institutionalization, I believe, appears to be a rational move for persons most familiar with a limited set of choices because we all hope to be good at the core of who we are. And we are better at those things with which we are most familiar. Failing to choose well in light of a massive selection of choices, most of which we hadn’t access to before because of the previous restrictions, paralyzes people trying live good lives.

I think it’s connected to the thought that we might choose to do something that is so incredibly wrong, we throw everything out of whack around us. Hidden in this assumption is the notion that there is one right way to do everything. That God has a single plan and if you mess up you can’t get back in on it.

But the thing is with jazz is that there’s a lot of space for creativity and what seems to be missteps. They all get incorporated into the piece eventually.

Likewise, if we hold that God is a creator and redeemer, he can do just that with each of our choices that we make. No matter what program, what experience, what decisions we choose. We just get to enjoy the music we make together.