Dear The World,
When everything goes wrong it is easy to panic. In fact, it is natural to panic. In more facts: the word panic itself probably comes from the minor greek god Pan, who was the god of the wild and what some would often call "natural" places of the world. He was also a half-goat, half-human prankster with no job whose friends were spirits of the woodlands (Dryads, Naiads, etc) and wild animals. So maybe don't go choosing him as a role model. But I digress, panicking is one of the things humans do best, It's probably our best event in the species Olympics right after Destroying Where We Live For Ease and Profit (which, let's be honest, is mostly an event to help the other species feel better). The point is that panicking isn't inherently bad, it's a reaction to stress left over from our ancestors who needed something like that to get them going when they spotted an angry Stegosaurus charging them, and they needed to GO.
That being said, the next few weeks are going to be filled with points of panic. Some people are going back to school, some people aren't going back to school but are watching as their friends do, and some people just can't find THE DANG HOUSE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DELIVER THE PIZZA TO, AND THERE'S NO CELL RECEPTION OUT HERE. Regardless of the situation the important thing to remember is to not let it get the best of you. Do not let panicking shove you into inaction, rather let it be fuel for your action.
I think about all the people that are about to be new fresh-meat……I mean freshmen, in both college and high school and I think about what would happen if someone had told me not to panic. I was nervous, sure, but I was excited too. We all were. But I think about what happens when that excitement fades, and that's something that no one talks about, day 3 or 4 of college and maybe you've made some friends, but you aren't sure how to keep up with all this work, or you signed up for twelve billion extra-curricular activities but you really do not have the time for all of them but you love them all so much, but you also love your perfect GPA and your alone time. Or maybe you're out in the world, the new "real-person" job has set in and you're doing great, but you're living to work and that's something you swore you would never become. That kind of panic happens to, and its something that the cheery articles and "helpful hints" your R.A.'s, life coaches, parents or work friends don't tell you about enough, and that's because the answer to "how to deal with it all" isn't satisfactory.
The answer is that you've got to figure it out. Only you know what that means, only you are able to solve this problem the way that you should. And what's more? That's the way it should be. In the immortal words of Jon Bon Jovi "It's [your] life, and it's now or never" that means ultimately, YOU make the decisions. They aren't free of consequences, but that's what it means to have true freedom, and weather you are getting a huge load of that all at once or a tiny sliver, what you do with that freedom is what defines you.
Sincerely,
A guy trying to figure out his life in a town where all the pizza shops are closed by 11.
