Most of The Odyssey’s readers consist of college students, soon to be college students, or young adults. We are all at that age when we are determining who we are going to be for the rest of our lives. It’s this wonderful and terrifying time. However, many have lost sight of the journey as their lives have gained momentum.
You see, we all start out at the bottom of the pack: Kindergarten. From kindergarten on, all we can possibly think about is the next step: Fifth grade, the oldest and coolest kids in the school. Once we pass fifth grade, we move on to middle school where all we can hold on to is the promise that we will one day be eighth graders. Then we’re eighth graders, and all we can hope for is that soon enough we’ll be seniors in high school.
The list goes on and on. The same thing will happen in college, then in your job until your time is up, and you look back and wonder why you were so focused on the next point in your life that you forgot to live in the now.
Something I learned from losing loved ones both young and old is that the time we have on this earth is not always going to be here. We don’t get a certain amount of days and hours until we pass. Anything could happen at any minute of our lives, and everything you’ve done, said, and experienced are simply memories.
For the lack of a better phrase: Carpe diem. It’s understandable to have hopes and goals for what your future may one day look like, but don’t get so lost in who you will be and forget to celebrate who you are now.
As a society, I believe we were all raised similarly. We go to school as children until we graduate high school as adults. Then we go to college until we graduate again. Then we start at the bottom of our careers and earn just enough money to survive and pay for our college loans. We work all of our lives just to work some more, which is fine. It’s a good system. The employed stimulate the economy. But as long as we’re working most of our non-adult lives to just work more in our adult lives, we might as well make our journey a memorable one.
You never know what is going to happen tomorrow. I’ve never experienced someone walking up to me and telling me with 100 percent certainty that I will be around tomorrow. So as long as we’re alive, we might as well live. As long as we have today, we might as well experience it to its fullest.
That doesn't mean get trashed at nine in morning or party all night on a Tuesday. The point to take away from this is that it’s a beautiful life that we have the opportunity to live, and we take it for granted too often. So live the life you've wanted to live. Don’t stand in your own way, and don’t take for granted those who stand by your side.
