“I forget how fast time is moving until I see you; each time you come home you’ve grown even more. When you get to be my age, time doesn’t move so fast anymore.”
That’s what my 68-year-old aunt said to me last time I was home. It took me back. Time is moving so fast for me, and I can feel it. It feels like yesterday that I was moving into Saint Louis University as a freshman, but in reality, I’m already finishing up my sophomore year now. I think ahead: where will I go to graduate school? Who will I live with senior year? How will I decorate my first apartment? These are things that are a year or more away.
There are so many firsts coming in my life that I can’t help but be excited for them, but now I’m afraid that I am forgetting to live in the present. I know that years from now I will look back on the memories I’m making and talk about how much fun I had, but shouldn’t I be trying to enjoy those moments while I’m in them?
That’s why I’m trying to just be. When I’m in a moment, I’m trying to stop and breathe. I focus on the smells, and the noises, and the faces around me. It makes this overwhelming feeling of gratitude flood my body. Instead of focusing on where I’m going, I need to look at where I am. It helps me to leave the past in the past and to meet the future as it comes.
I’ve had so much anxiety about this lately, and I think that’s common; but you just can’t control the way time moves so quickly. There is no pause button. When I talked to my mom last week about this, she gave me the best reassurance she could have, and I am trying to remind myself of it daily. She told me:
“You are good enough as you are, where you are.”
So that’s my two cents; remember to embrace the memories you’re making as you make them, to love those around you as best as you can and to try to be content with where you’re at right now. Someday, you might miss them.