The other night, I found myself trapped under a workload that kept piling up, unable to deal with not just the amount of things that I had to check off my to-do list, but the emotional toll it was taking on me. I keep waiting for it to end; my sole respite was was those two (and a half) days where I wouldn't have to feel the crushing anxiety of racing from one task to another. Meetings upon meetings one day, an interview the next, then volunteering and studying late into the night. I did it in high school and I do it in college. My friend delivered a crushing reality to me when I told her that I couldn't take it anymore.
She told me "Hannah, I don't know if you have a choice. I think life is just like this."
She made me wonder if my whole life will be like this, waiting until something better comes along. I think a lot of us feel this way; we are never complacent with where we are or what we're doing. We always want the next best thing and it's been proven in countless psychological studies that once our basic physiological needs and have financial security, money does not correlate with happiness. So while we keep striving for more, more, and even more, we don't end up being happier. So it got me thinking, how am I going to live the rest of my life like this? How am I going to start enjoying the moment, right now?
For me, I believe that the key to living and loving the moment you're in is deciding what makes you happy, assessing your own life, and adjusting accordingly. If you want to spend more time with your family or your dog, do that! If you want to bake cookies on a Friday night instead of going out for drinks, do that! I think that people (including myself) are so focused on what they should be doing that they miss out on what makes their heart happy. In order to stop waiting for 2 days off of work, you need to make each day worth living.
