Ready, Set, Go.

By Laviynia Menon

You do it all the time. On the way to school, finishing your assignments, getting work done. We rush all the time. Some may argue that rushing is largely situational; that it only happens when we’re running late or failing to meet a time obligation. While that may be true, it doesn’t encapsulate all the other times that we look straight ahead instead of at what’s around us, like horses on a race track. 

I was talking to some middle schoolers a while back, and out of jest, I asked them why they were participating in so many activities when they didn’t have the least bit of interest in them. I was expecting some sort of reply on the basis that it was to hang out with friends, but instead, their replies came easily, automatically, even.

“My mom says it will look good for me to do that when I go to college.”

I had to stop and process that for a while. These kids weren’t even in high school, and they were already acting in accordance with things they would need maybe five, six years later. Of course, it’s wise to start planning early, but how early?

As a society, we are never satisfied. We are insatiable, greedy, thirsty for more. Once we climb one mountain, we want to climb another, then we shoot for the stars. When we enter middle school we stare starry-eyed at the high schoolers, wondering when that will be us in those yellow striped shirts. When we’re in high school we other ogle college students, imagining ourselves in their place. The cycle repeats, over and over whether we’re working adults or kids on a play-ground.

We’re so lost in what we want out future to be, that sometimes we forget that our time now was, in fact, part of the future we had been striving to reach at one point. Shasha Menon (7) states, “I was really excited to be in seventh grade because we can do more things than in sixth grade, but now that I’m in seventh grade I think eighth grade looks a lot cooler.”

I think that’s something we all struggle with, and as graduation approaches and university decisions approach, we all need a reminder to remember that our future is composed of nows. Our time now is just as important as any future you’re planning for. Stop and appreciate the things around you, because what you’re living now was a vision you were chasing after at some point. We don’t need to stop chasing our goals, we just need to know to slow down and admire the view sometimes.