Advice on why we all need to take a step back and stop rushing away from the current moment
Throughout our lives, especially in college, when we have four classes a day, go straight to a club meeting or to work, and then come home to hours of homework, it’s really easy to wish it away. Wish away the late-night talks with your roommates, wish away today or this week, and always be looking ahead to the next thing. It always comes in the words of something like, “the only thing that is getting me through this week is the weekend,” or “I can’t wait for school to be over so I’m not stressed anymore.” And realistically, yes, things get really hard and chaotic if your schedule is full from 9 to 9, but what’s the rush to get out of such a transformative and special time in your life when you know you will never get to relive it? What I didn’t realize then was that rushing through life doesn’t make it easier. It just makes it emptier.
Anytime I have reflected on my life and found myself wishing things or events were over (especially the senior year of high school and living in the dorms freshman year), I look back with regret. Not because I did anything wrong, but just because I didn’t let myself bask in the reality of the now. I said I couldn’t wait to get out of high school and start taking classes that actually meant something to me, but I missed the chance to take advantage of being “stuck” in classrooms with my childhood best friends for hours at a time, and took it for granted. When I was living in the dorm, it would always be that I hated the dining hall and couldn’t eat it anymore, or that sharing a space that small was so undeniably miserable. But when I look back, I just miss that all of my new school best friends lived down the hall and I could go get dinner with them every night, or just walk into their rooms to talk. But I was always looking forward to what was next, how I wanted to get out of the current moment. And putting that rush onto myself to get out of the now is my only regret.
When it comes to doing or completing things, I always fill my schedule to the brim, especially in high school, giving whatever attention or energy I have left after a long day to as many different things as I possibly can. What comes with overloading your schedule? Usually, rushing through all of them just to get them done and push them out to the world so it is out of your hands. What I have learned since being in college is that when a tiny portion of your energy is dedicated to 100 different things, the quality of work almost completely diminishes. But when you stop rushing and take your time with half as many things, you can master those few things and make them your own.
Although it is so easy to rush through your tasks, days, weeks or even months, it’s important to realize what you can do if you slow down. I was recently on a plane home from Florida with my best friends, sitting there thinking about how the trip went by so fast, and how sad I was it was over; it felt like it had been way too rushed. So the word rush came to me. I looked up a definition of the word and just started writing what that definition meant to me. What I wrote came out sounding like advice. Advice to myself that I will keep with me as I move through the rest of my college years, so here is what I had to say:
Rush – verb (to do something too quickly, often without enough care, thought or preparation)
Always thinking ahead. Ahead to the next opportunity. Ahead to know in which direction your life will lead. Although the security that rushing and longing for more can bring is ideal, the irresistible urge to dismiss the now in pursuit of the next is one of the most detrimental flaws of humankind. How can you appreciate the now when the rush consumes you?
“Without enough care.” A concept that makes me uneasy to a new extent. Denying the rush can feel impossible, but when you self-assess and you realize the level of care you are exerting in each endeavor doesn’t seem to be high enough, you have the chance to step back and make adjustments and avoid the terrifying regret of letting the now slip away. Take that chance. Reevaluate. Adjust.
Think to yourself: how fulfilled would you be rushing to one hundred mediocre opportunities, when you have the chance to dedicate your uninterrupted time to ten or fifteen really incredible ones?
Leave the rush in the past and love the now with everything you can; if you don’t, it will slip right through your fingers.