privileges

The morning at uni started a little strangely. I was expecting to see a bunch of people I knew in the class I was going to, but all the faces that came were entirely unknown, and I got the feeling my institute's student population had been entirely renewed and the older generation - which I now belong to - completely eradicated. It wasn't a comfortable feeling. I waited on the grass in the sun after the class for K (not ex-boyfriend K, a German K) to have lunch with him like last week but felt isolated on an island of young nameless faces.
When K eventually arrived, we started walking towards the cafeteria and on the way bumped into J, whom I basically know since the beginning of my studies, and M, who was in my project class last year and whom I recently bumped into in the metro and had a good chat with. They were with a third guy, and we all set off for the cafeteria together. It was a relief to have bumped into known people after all.
It felt like an insanely privileged situation - to have a long leisurly lunch on the top terrasse of the cafeteria in the sun, chatting, and then move on to our institute's autonomous café for a coffee, sitting on the lawn for a long while and discussing dreams, plans for one's future, their meaningfulness or not.
How many years since I last took time to leisurly discuss anything on a lawn with a bunch of people? Ages. It's pretty sad to think I've spent most of the last fives years hectically rushing through a self-centered life with little social contact. But the only reason I can allow myself to take leisure ("Muße" in German. Pronounce Moooossah, sort of) is that I'm not taking any classes for credits this semester. I'm a lot freeer. And self-determined free time tastes particularly good after one has been deprived of it for a while.
(Not that this should serve as justification to deprive people of their freedom to enjoy time with no work.)