Why don't we spend time in classes being more productive and do less for homework? Teachers (or one specifically) spends half a class period almost every day complaining about how they keep cancelling school days and how much of the year has gone by and how much we still have to cover. Just shut up and teach it already!!
And then we get these huge projects and essays and such . . . I'm too young to have this much work. Why can't childhood just be all the fun and games its supposed to be? Yeah, I may be only two years from college, where I "get kicked out of the house and have to fend for myself," but didn't I essentially do that to myself two years early by opting to go to boarding school? I guess it would be a little presumptuous to ask for the freedoms of living away from home without the responsibilities too. So yeah, I know I'll always have homework. ALWAYS. It never ends, even after college and you get a "real" job, or any job for that matter, whether its bumming as a ski instructor for a few years or traveling the world as a journalist, or doing research for something scientific, or I don't know what else. Theres always more work that has to be done.
So why not live our lives? Why do all the work all the time if, in the end, it only makes us more stressed, more tired, less lively? What if, on my deathbed, I look back at life and realize that I never lived my life because I spent the whole thing working? I am so afraid, SOOOO afraid, of dying with that regret, or any regrets really. I'm afraid I'll run out of my youth and innocence too soon, that things will go too fast, and before I know it I'll be all grown up wondering where my adolescence went. Sweet Sixteen, its supposed to be SWEET. In many, many ways it is sweet, but in others, its a LOT of work. I just don't want to be thirty, wishing I could go back and re-live sixteen. Or sixty, looking back on thirty. Theres a time in life for hard work, but now isn't it. Work hard now, and you fall into the trap of working hard your whole life. Work your ass off to get good grades in high school to get into the perfect university, where you work your ass off to get into the best graduate schools, where you work your ass off to get an amazing job, where you work your ass off to get ahead, but by the time you get to the point where it all pays off, haven't you missed out on everything along the way? Maybe its just the procrastinator in me shining through, saying screw around now and work later, but theres the other half of me that is stuck to society's ideas of perfection. You know, the perfect 4.0 student, involved in everything, smart, funny, athletic, attractive, social, studious, the one who gets into Harvard/ Yale/ Princeton, grows up to be a doctor or a lawyer, charitable . . .and then I realize that this is who I've tried to turn myself into, totally unintentionally. Or subconsciously. In some ways it was intentional. I've always prided myself on being unique, an individualist, a non-conformist, but then I look again, and whaddayaknow, I'm doing exactly what society wants me to. What happens when I die, and realize that I never knew who I really was? I mean, I think I know parts of who I am, but I probably just know the parts of who I've made myself become. Is that really me?? How do I know? How do I figure out who's behind the mask?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
we always ask if who we are is who we are. but i don't think you can find the answer by asking, you have to be and reflect on your life and realize even if then i was not who i am now that is a part of me my past and that is me the sum of all my parts everything i do is me and there is no way to change the past parts of us we can only change the now to something that will be different later.
It's confusing, isn't it? Because even though we might be the type of person who would go off to Africa and do charity or reporting or whatever, if we don't actually do it, if we stay and live the life that's expected of us, it's NOT who we are, no matter how much we think we could have. Maybe we could have, but we didn't. But why worry about the future or past? Worry about your action for THAT day. You may not get as much accomplished, but you could also just go off and DO things. Things that you'd never do otherwise.
Post a Comment