It seems to be a sentiment a lot of college students have.
Oh no, the future!
It’s something that I worry about too. My friends joke that I worry so much about next week that I sometimes forget about what I should do today. It’s hard not to see time ahead as a long stretch of “oh no.”
Job applications. Classes. Grades. Relationships. Friendships.
Things to do. Places to be. People to see, and all those clichés. It’s true. My most-checked app is my Notes because it has my schedule and to-do lists in it. My friends worry. I worry. It’s just human nature to be curious and excited. To think so far ahead that you forget today.
What will an average day look like twenty years from now? Thirty?
I worry about everything. The past. The present. The future. I’m getting better at reconciling with the past. You can’t change it, can you? It shaped your present. It made you who you are. Sometimes I forget about the present moment in favor of the future. Maybe there’s something fun planned ahead. Maybe the uncertainty is simply terrifying.
But I sit back. Sometimes, I remember to breathe. To be thankful for the present.
Sometimes, I panic. But that’s okay.
Because the present has promise. The future, potential.
And that’s how we can have the agency to alter it for the better.