Wellness Wednesday: Your Weekly Dose of Happiness, Nutrition, and Fitness Tips
Right Here, Right Now
As I stand a few weeks from graduation, I can’t help but notice the Hey Day stick on one side of the room sitting next to my unsubsidized graduation robe. A lot can change in a year, and a lot is going to change in the next year. But that’s not the worst thing in the world.
Everyday, I’m inundated with Buzzfeed quizzes (thank you, roommate. I still love you) and Elite Daily posts about what every college student “wishes they knew” or “wishes they did” before it was too late. Writers are using their magazine and newspapers to tell the world about their regrets, lest someone would repeat the same mistake. But someone will, and people should reserve the right to make their own mistakes.
One of the “regrets” on these generic lists someone wrote was “not meeting enough people.” If you’re a college student tossing and turning at night about not having met enough people, get out of bed and meet some people. No one ever gained anything from dwelling on freshman and sophomore year mistakes. Another was “I wish I studied more,” which again you can’t exactly go back and change. Move on, and study today if it’s really what you want to do.
We have so many words in the English vocabulary about moving “forward” and “looking ahead,” and in one of the first homeroom classes I had in middle school at an American school, I was asked to write down some “long-term” goals. We have words to express what we wish we could have done “better,” in “retrospect” and I’ve been asked on several occasions whether I would still be a Psych major if I could “go back.”
Unfortunately, I can’t think of present-oriented verbs that come up every day, because they don’t come up every day. You’re constantly drafting iCal invites for things that will happen several weekends from now, and encounter people who are wondering where you’ll be in two or three months, but how many times has someone asked you on Locust how you are right now, at the very moment you’re standing in front of them?
Who are we if we’re always trying to escape the skin of the person we are today to run back and fix things, or worse, to sprint ahead to a future self? It’s not easy to stay grounded in the present moment when graduation emails and career services surveys flood your inbox. But you can at least try to appreciate every moment for what it is.
I’m thankful for having an outspoken best friend who will yell at me for pulling my phone out during lunch. I’m never actively trying to be rude, I’m just figuring out my plans for the rest of the evening, which is distracting me from the current plans I have: If you’re at lunch, be at lunch. I don’t want to throw the blame on technology, but it does allow us to speak in future terms and respond to what-are-you-doing-tonight texts while you’re in class, yanking you straight out of real time and teleporting you to this weekend. Make it stop.
For my Psychology of Personal Growth class, we had to engage in a walking meditation. The mindfulness of feeling the soles of my feet and the friction of my jacket while walking down the street without checking my phone, reviewing the errands I need to run, or updating my calendar was such a novel experience.
It is possible to be present, you just have to appreciate the exact moment you’re in right now. Embrace the uncertainty of the future and the irreversibility of the past. Once you’ve accepted that, you can’t plan too far ahead and you can’t turn too far back, you’ll realize that you have no choice than to be right here, right now.
Circle the “you are here now” point on a map and cherish it—because it might be the only time in your life you’ll be with this weather, this homework assignment, this unpaid bill, this age, and more importantly, these people.
Diana Gonimah is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania from Cairo, Egypt. She is a writer, Features Editor, and Recruiting Chair at the UPenn chapter of Her Campus. She’s passionate about psychology, journalism, creative writing, and helping people in any capacity. Check our website every Wednesday for Diana’s column!