The following is an example of an exchange I hear all the time.
Student X: “This week is going to suck.”Student Y: “Yea it is, two tests, and a 10-page paper”
Every day I hear at least one fellow scholar complaining about the intensity of his or her work-week. I’m a big complainer myself, and often begin these sorts of conversations. Don’t worry I’m not planning to say that commiserating is bad. Alternately, I think that it makes one feel better to know that they’re not alone and it helps build a sense of community among students.
No, dear reader, I am instead advocating to eliminate the usual conclusion to this conversation, which normally goes something like this:
Student X: “Ugh, I wish it was the weekend.” Student Y: “Forget that, I wish it was next summer.”
Creepy student Z who has been desperately trying to enter the conversation, but who is sitting several rows back so he or she has to yell uncomfortably loud, which effectively ends the conversation with some awkward glances (I accept that this scenario is oddly specific, but it’s a near verbatim description of a real conversation I overheard this week): “I wish it was summer 2009, cause then I’d be graduated!”
At this junction the conversation necessarily ceases, to prevent the cool kids from needing to acknowledge this unwelcome addition to their exchange.
As an innocent bystander, I was simply trying to enjoy my crossword puzzle as I waited patiently for another thrilling lecture. Immediately then I was reminded of a phrase my mother said to me as often in my childhood as “did you do your homework?” A phrase which at the time meant little but which I now pass on to you, in the hopes it helps in some small way to improve your life as it has mine.
She said “don’t wish your life away.”
I wished a lot of my life away, it never went. I haven’t lived some sort of real-life version of the movie “Click” which I won’t bother to give you a synopsis of because if you haven’t seen it you are luckier than I.
But even though wishing my life away didn’t technically damage my life in the sense that time and space didn’t alter to teach me a lesson, I still feel like all that wishing was distracting me from enjoying every day for what it was.
I hope that you don’t have the same problem, but given the frequency of which I hear a conversation like the one above on campus leads me to believe that my experience is in no way isolated.
I believe that wishing for tomorrow, or the distant future, is nothing but a distraction. The future is never as perfect as we imagine, often it’s worse and I hate to say it, but the future is never guaranteed. This fact should be even more reason to focus on enjoying everything that today is and could be if you really focused.
Are you wishing your life away? Tell us what you think by e-mailing us at [email protected].