The essence of time is so important because it is completely out of our control. Time goes by and even if we want to stop it or make it fly forward, we can’t. Many times we find ourselves wanting to rewind to when times were much simpler or fast-forwarding to a future moment in time. It can be hard to enjoy the present because we take it for granted. Even though sometimes we want to fast forward, in a few years we are going to look back and wish we were here again.

This is the time of our lives when we don’t need it all figured out. We’re still young and finding what we love and don’t love and meeting friends who will be there for a lifetime. These are the times when we can be independent, find new interests, and live spontaneously. We don’t have the pressures and responsibilities of being an adult quite yet. This time of our lives is crucial because we’re finding our identity on our own, being away from home and not having our parents influence us so much. We’re making our own decisions and learning from them.

I often find myself wanting to fast forward. I want to fast forward in time so that I can be more mature and know what I’m doing with my life. However, I have learned to recognize that it’s OK to not be mature or know our purpose in life now. This is supposed to be a fun time in our lives where we can experience different things and not be fully mature. If we can’t make time move faster, then we must enjoy what we have now. We have independence, friends at school, friends at home, and our family at home. Let’s not take any of this for granted.

One of my close friends wrote her high school graduation speech on the essence of time and living in the moment. She was consistently wanting time to move faster so that she could be at a different moment in time. She said “Waiting for time to fly but it only flies when we don’t want it to and it stops when we need it to. As John Green once wrote, ‘Time is such a slut, she screws everybody.’” I find this so important because everyone has those thoughts every once in awhile, that they want to move forward to a better time, but what we don’t recognize is that these are the good times. After her speech, my friend and I coincidentally watched a movie together called ‘The Now.’ This movie had the same concept as her speech. The very last line of the movie actually was “It’s fine to live in the now but the best part of the now is that there’s another one tomorrow.” I wrote this down because I found it so powerful and relevant to her speech on time and enjoying the present moment. We might think the future is going to be the better times, but perhaps we’re living in it. Enjoy it while you’re here because we’re going to wish we were here again.