Throughout my college years, I have always heard the same phrase "These will be the best days of your life". I have always politely smiled and shrugged it off, thinking to myself: "Whoever coined that phrase either had a lot of money or an easy major". It wasn't until I watched the final episode of NBC's "The Office" When I really understood the significance of that cliche quote.
In the last episode of The Office, Andy Bernard says "I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you have actually left them". This quote really stuck with me because it holds so much truth. While I have been waiting impatiently to graduate college and get my life started, I just might have lost track of what really matters along the way. It can be easy to foster a one-track mind that helps you simply make it through life. The beauty of "the good old days" is that there is no plan or agenda. In another quote found in The Office, Creed says: "No matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home". This is so simple but profound. Perhaps the key to being happy in life is to make a home out of every stage throughout your life. For me, slowing down and making my college apartment home made a world of difference. Once I stopped to soak in the madness of my every day shenanigans, I began to live life as if I'll look back one day and remember these as being the best days of my life.
Although the future is exciting and many of us are eagerly anticipating what lies ahead in our lives, I challenge myself and all of you to think of these quotes, and to think of them often. Because what Andy and Creed said are right; there is no way to know you're in the good old days until you are looking at them in the rear-view mirror. That is precisely why it is so important to cherish the present and to live every day to the fullest. Make a home out of where you are and enjoy every day because one day, when you're in your fifties or sixties, you'll look back at these days and remember them as the best days of your life.
