Happiness is when your class gets canceled. Happiness is seeing your best friend after months apart. Happiness is when your mom makes you breakfast in bed. Happiness is not stress. Happiness is not boy drama. Happiness is not living in fear. Being this age, so young and careless, its easy to get lost in self doubt and pity. We often wonder if we're good enough, if all of our hard work is worth it, if we can make it in the world. We are, it is and we can. Sometimes we have to let go of the anger and sadness that we're hoarding in our hearts and trust that the decisions we make are the right now are the right ones. Even if they aren't the right decisions, they're the ones we chose to make, and they're the ones that are right for that moment. They're the ones that define everything after that moment. If it's a good outcome then great, but if it's not the outcome you'd want, it's still the outcome you're gonna get and maybe you needed to go through that bad to get to the good. There's no way to change your life so learn to live with it.

The hardest thing to do is let go of the regrets that we carry around. I'm tired of seeing my friends make a mistake and define their lives by it. In the nicest way possible, get over it and move on. I mean that from the bottom of my heart, and I need to learn to do it too. It's tiring to dwell on the past and try to knit pick every action we take. We're young and free, and we need to mess up so we know how to not in the future.

By no means am I saying to just ignore school, but by all means am I saying that if you let your school work consume you, you're going to lose a little bit of yourself. Try hard, go to class, do your homework, study, but don't put everything else in your life on hold because school has gotten the best of you. It's okay to not have everything figured out. It's okay to be tired and stressed out but to an extent. You have to sit yourself down and tell yourself to calm down and let go. There's a bigger picture. There's a bigger life planned for you. Just let life take its course and enjoy the ride.

It doesn't matter how deep in school work you are, take a day to yourself. Go to a general admission concert. Travel to a random town you've never heard of. Ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Live your life in a way where you'll say "remember that time," instead of, "I wish we did that." You deserve to be happy, you deserve to have fun, you deserve to spend time with your friends. So go do it. Stop letting your happiness depend on others or school or work. Happiness is when you're in control of your life.