I have recently developed a very rational reason not to fall in love: I graduate in May.  

I suppose this deadline also gives me a rational reason not to start a relationship, become too attached to someone new or even invest too deeply in a friendship whose future I cannot predict. In less than a year, the circumstances that brought most of us together will disappear. People will graduate. Jobs will begin. Cities will change. I might leave Los Angeles; they might, too.

Why start something when I already know there is a deadline?

It’s a convincing argument. Sensible, even. Which is precisely what worries me about it. 

If you’ve been following “No Straight Answers,” you know that last semester I fell in love with someone in his final semester at USC. Now, I’m in his position. And suddenly, the same logic I once objected to feels remarkably sensible. The trouble is that what sounds like wisdom may simply be anxiety in disguise — an arbitrary rule I’ve created to spare myself from having to choose.

There are plenty of reasons I could give for not pursuing someone during my final year at USC. I could say the timing is wrong. I could say that whatever I build now will be built on borrowed time, and that anything worth having deserves a foundation sturdier than that. I could point toward whatever comes after May and explain that beginning something now would only make leaving harder later. None of these statements could be concretely defined as false.

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard understood anxiety as not simply fear, but as something produced by possibility. In “The Concept of Anxiety,” he describes anxiety as the “dizziness of freedom”: the disorientation we experience when confronted with something we could do.

Fear, in that framework, has an object: I can fear heartbreak; I can fear asking something and hearing an answer I wish I didn’t. 

Anxiety is a stranger emotion. It emerges because I could say anything at all, and a rule reduces that possibility. If I decide I should not date because I am graduating, I no longer have to wonder whether I should ask someone out. If I decide the timing is wrong before anything begins, I never have to contend with what might have happened if it became right.

The rule makes the decision for me.

And perhaps that is why rationality can become such an effective disguise for fear: Fear sounds emotional. Rationality sounds responsible.

Of course there is a danger in taking this idea too far. Not every hesitation is cowardice. Not every boundary is meant to be crossed. There are relationships we should leave, risks we should not take and desires that should remain desires. Maturity can mean accepting that wanting something does not make pursuing it wise. 

But maturity can also mean recognizing when wisdom turns into an alibi. A boundary may begin as an honest acknowledgment of reality — for example, “I am graduating,” or, “My future is uncertain” — but somewhere along the way, that acknowledgment can harden into a verdict. What was once a fact about my circumstance becomes a rule about how I am allowed to live within them.

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued that human beings are “condemned to be free.” We don’t choose the circumstances into which we are thrown, but we do remain responsible for what we do within them. To escape that responsibility, Sartre said we often retreat into “bad faith.” We convince ourselves that our circumstances have decided for us, that we cannot do something when really we will not. 

Saying that I cannot pursue someone because I graduate in May would be its own form of bad faith. Graduation doesn’t make connection impossible; it makes connection complicated. Those are not the same thing. 

We rarely apply Sartre’s standard consistently. We do not refuse to make friends because people might move away. We do not reject happiness simply because it cannot be sustained indefinitely. Yet when it comes to love, we often treat the possibility of an ending as evidence that a beginning would be irresponsible. 

But impermanence doesn’t negate meaning. Often, it creates it. 

A final year matters because it’s final. A last conversation matters because there will not be another one after it. The approaching end of college does not make the relationships formed there less real. It asks us to encounter them more honestly, without assuming that time will always be available later.

That does not mean every connection must become a commitment, or that setting a boundary requires pretending nothing was ever there. Sometimes the courageous choice is to walk away, to say no, to protect a part of yourself that has been treated carelessly. 

But sometimes, courage is asking the question you have already decided not to ask — sending the message, accepting the invitation, admitting that someone matters before you know what the admission will demand of you. 

The line itself cannot tell us which choice is right. We have to examine why we drew it.

Andrew Cardenas is a senior writing about love in all its forms in his column, “No Straight Answers,” which runs every other Wednesday. He is also the DEIA director at the Daily Trojan.