For the first time in a while, I said no to going out and doing something with my friends. Now you may wonder, why would anyone turn down seeing their friends after having spent almost a year in isolation? (Oh, “happy” lockdown anniversary by the way.) When the chance to see the people I enjoy being around doesn’t come about as frequently as it used to, I should be saying yes to everything. But after a long week, I couldn’t drag myself off the couch and out the front door. I was both physically and mentally exhausted to the point where I fell asleep right after watching this week’s episode of WandaVision when I came home from work.
I frequently catch myself saying that my time in college, surrounded by friends, is slowly slipping away as each day passes. The time that everyone says will be “the best years of your life.” And while I would certainly agree with that, it’s hard to know for sure that this will always be the best time of my life. I guess it’s all relative, but who says that the day after I graduate won’t be better than all of college put together, or maybe that will happen ten, twenty, or thirty years from now? As much as I would like to know what comes next and never have to worry, that’s what makes life exciting. The mystery of every single second’s potential. If we spent every day knowing exactly what would happen and when, life would be boring and not worth living to the fullest.
You could argue that maybe I did miss the best moment of my life or that all my friends could have had a better time with me being there, but who says the opposite couldn’t be true. Maybe my loud and insane personality not being there gave someone the clarity they needed to have the best night of their life? Until I can get my hands on a time machine and explore every single possibility of where that night could have gone, I won’t know. And quite frankly, I don’t want to know.
A few years ago, the idea of the fear of missing out was really popular. I never quite understood that because we miss out on 99.99% of what happens around the world. And even on a smaller scale just within your friends and family, you miss at least 90% of things that could have included you in a single day. So why focus so much on what we miss and not the moments that we live in? Why don’t we seek to relish each moment of our day the same way as we long for the chance to go back in time and participate in something that could have been completely different had we been present? Life rolls by way too quickly to worry about that, and if I had to bet, you would make yourself miserable if that’s all you could think about instead of enjoying what was right in front of you.
Now that a good chunk of my time in college has been spent locked away because of a virus, I should be trying to make the most of what I can to make the most of my moments, but then I remember something. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I can still give 100% towards that. Even if it is giving 100% to falling asleep knowing I lived the day to its fullest potential.
Senioritis is an Opinion column written by a current Stevens student in their last year of study to discuss life experiences during their final year at Stevens, and other related subject matter.
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