I wish time would just slow down. I know that sounds awfully senseless to say, but I really wish I could pause life for a second and enjoy the moment. 24 hours seems like a pretty long period of time. If it was really such a long period of time, why do the days, weeks, months, and years go by as fast as they are? I feel like it was just yesterday that I was entering my freshman year of high school, and now I’m almost done with my first year of college. I used to tell myself that I had time. I had time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to major in and who I wanted to become as a person. I used to have the time, but I feel as if that time I once had is now gone. Now I’m in this period of limbo, uncertain with what my next step should be and ambiguously waiting for a sign to pop up out of nowhere, pointing me in some sort of direction, telling me what I should do with my life, and if I’m even on the right track.

So, I guess you could say my biggest, yet most irrational, fear as of this moment would be wasting my time. I’m constantly scrolling through online news sources and even my social media pages witnessing people who have made such contributions to society and I often wonder if that could ever be me. I wonder what these people must’ve done right for them to have made such an impact on a society as big as this one. I wonder if they were feeling as lost and perplexed as I currently am feeling during their first year of college, doubtful on what they wanted to do and hesitant on what they felt their purpose was in life. Am I doing just the bare minimum in college as of right now? Is there something more that I can be doing to make a difference or even a slight contribution to society? Am I wasting my time majoring in something that doesn’t directly lead me to some definitive career? When I’m older and out of college will I look back and wish that I did more? These are the questions that scare me so much and it’s something that I often think about a lot.

Something that was so scary to me was that people started making a difference so young. For example, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs were able to find such success at such a young age. It’s scary to think that there are young people in this world, even younger than me, with more success behind their name than I have ever achieved. This has me wondering if I’m moving too slow and, if I am, what I should be doing to fix it. While my biggest fear is that I’m wasting my time, I’m also terrified that I will soon realize all that I am capable of when it might be too late. And while I’m only 19 and I still have more than enough time to figure myself out and find my niche in whatever it is I want to do with my life, I just hope that whatever I end up doing is meaningful and will make me a happier person in the long run.

The bottom line is, time is going by so fast and whether we like it or not, there’s really no way to slow it down. It’s inevitable that life is going to go by in the blink of an eye. I’ve come to realize that instead of living my life with the constant fear in the back of my head of “am I wasting my time?” I should instead pursue things in life that make me happy and, at the end of the day, will leave me with no regret at all.

While this irrational fear of mine might never end up subsiding, I have since come to the realization that while time does go by incredibly fast, it’s up to us, as individuals, to never waste a second on something meaningless and not worthwhile.