The other day, I decided to watch one of my favorite independent movies called The Spectacular Now. Based on the best-selling novel, the story is about a partying, alcoholic high school senior named Sutter (Miles Teller) whose perspective on life changes when he meets a down-to-earth, shy girl named Amy (Shailene Woodley). In the movie, when Sutter gets dumped by his girlfriend, Cassidy, and uses Amy as a way to get back at her and to help Amy boost her own self-confidence, he realizes how Amy starts to impact his life in ways he could have never imagined. The two lead actors, Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, were amazing as the characters Sutter and Amy. Not only did they both do a great job at portraying their characters, but their chemistry together was outstanding and I was rooting for them throughout the whole film. But by watching the movie for like the fifth time, it got me thinking: do all college and high school kids go through a “spectacular now” phase?
Now I know what you’re thinking, “What is a Spectacular Now phase”? Well, you see, the way I define it is when every high school or college student has a feeling of excessive partying and having fun now in the present that we forget to look forward to our future. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with partying and having fun. Hell, we’re young, that’s what we’re so supposed to do. I’m just saying if we do too much of it, we slowly forget to set goals for ourselves and invest in our future. We think that if we live life to the fullest now without a care in the world that somewhere down the line, opportunities will present themselves just like that because we have all the time in the world. What we don’t realize is that we don’t have all the time in the world and that life’s pretty damn short. Years will quickly start to go by and by the time we know it, we find ourselves working at a shitty job and hating ourselves for not having enough drive when we were younger to make something better of ourselves.
This kind of reminds me of an old friend I used to go to high school with. When it came to his academics, he was a pretty smart kid and got straight As in most of his classes. Since he was real good in science, he told me he thought about having a career in engineering some day. But when our senior year came around, he just lost his motivation. He would start cutting school, he didn’t do his homework, and he even skipped on days when we had tests. I even asked him what he was planning on doing after high school and he simply just said, “I don’t know.” I never questioned him why after that. It just made me wonder what happened to someone who went from being so motivated to do well all throughout high school to not caring at all about their future. The sad part is that he wasn’t the only one I saw this happen to. There were a few other kids in my grade who felt like they could care less about what their next step was after high school. I guess they figured that when the time came, they’d just cross that bridge when they got there.
Like I said before, I’m not saying you shouldn’t want to have fun and take every day one step at a time. Hell, when I die, I hope they put that on my tombstone. All I’m saying is that no matter how good the present looks right now, sooner or later we have to realize that we have to think about our future and try to start a life for ourselves. That’s why I think Sutter was such a good character in the movie. Not only did his character symbolize the youth mentality of living in the present, but at the end of the movie, he symbolized the idea of what every young person has to go through. We all have to grow up. So for all those young people out there who feel like they're invincible and want to just live in the moment instead of living in the spectacular now, how about you set goals and work hard to try and live in a spectacular future.
