If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught me anything, it’s to never take a “normal” second for granted, because you literally NEVER know what’s going to happen next. I remember in March, the weekend before spring break, wanting to go to Northgate with my best friends. We all thought about it and decided that with everybody leaving the next day we better wait until we got back the week after… Oh how I wish I could go back and grab these girls by the shoulders and say PLEASE JUST GO!
If we would have only known.
Yeah it sucks that we look back and realize that we could’ve gone out that night but didn’t, thinking we’d get the chance again soon. But you know what would suck even more? Getting to 30, 40, or 50 and realizing that you could have done something at 19… but you didn’t, and you’ll never be back there again.
I’m reading a book right now called “Twenty Two: Letters to a Young Woman Searching for Meaning”. The author builds on the idea that we need to stop treating these years as a road to get where we want to get, but that we need to realize that the journey IS the important part. It isn’t about the destination, per say, it’s about the trip.
She talks about being a young adult and feeling as if she couldn’t truly be happy until she got her degree, found the perfect job, and found the perfect man. When in fact, those years leading up to that would quite possibly be the best ones of her life. So what did she do? She started living every single day like it was one she would want to remember for the rest of her life.
She traveled, she laughed, she did everything intentionally and unapologetically.
So stop thinking about it (obviously if it’s a big decision and requires thought, please do so) and just start doing it. Date the guy, buy the dress, eat the piece of cake, apply to the school of your dreams, and don’t second guess yourself. PLEASE never apologize for it. Don’t waste another second of this precious life wondering if you should, because the time is now baby, and it’ll be over before you know it.
This is something that I am actively working on, and I encourage you to do the same. Take everyday with its good and its bad and do everything in your power to make it special. Treat your life as exactly that, your life or, as Tik Tok reminds me 30 times a day, “Start romanticizing your life. Start envisioning yourself as the main character”. It’s funny, but it’s true.
I don’t know about you, but I want to make it to my older years with no regrets and plenty of stories.