People are always saying that high school or college are "the best four years of your life". Everything about this saying frustrates me. I think it implies that you basically get four years either when you are 14-18 years old or 18-22 years old to live your best life and if that doesn't happen, well sorry about your luck, but you missed out. All throughout high school adults would tell me that these would be the best four years of my life, and I was always daunted by that statement.
It made me feel pressure to enjoy every single day because my life wouldn't get better than those four years, and to think that or much less say that is completely ridiculous. To be quite frank, I did not enjoy high school and I would not go back. Those could not possibly be the best four years of my life. Not to discredit all the good memories and experience I did have, but I always have expected more out of my life than what gave me joy as a 16-year-old who had a curfew. Once I felt that the pressure was off when I graduated high school and I could live life without the pressure of making it the "best", adults started saying the exact same thing about college and how that would be the best four years of my life.
Now, I could have been excited that I was being given another four years to make my best, but again there is that level of pressure. It's so easy whenever life isn't going your way to think, "Is this really what is supposed to be the best four years of my life?" Again, this is not to take away from the fun I have had at college, but I think to put this unattainable, unreachable pressure of the best years is just ridiculous. I'm sure I will look back and love the life I was living, but there is something paralyzing about focusing on a certain time period in one's life to be the best.
I would like to think that all the years in my life are going to have moments that make them the best. I don't want to be pigeonholed into thinking I am living or have already lived the best years of my life. I think there is a danger in this line of thinking to where if you think the best has already happened to you, where is the motivation to succeed and better yourself. Yes, right now these years are probably the years where we will have the least responsibility, but what about the years you get to spend with your future family and all the remaining years you have left in your life? I think it is doing a great disservice to your life to narrow down the best years to the years we live so early on. So much self-growth takes place throughout adulthood, and when we grow we only get better, which to me means all of our years have the potential to be great.
