It's times like these when we stop and look back on our lives and wonder, what the hell are we doing? I mean, how many hours have you spent in that goddamn library slouched over textbooks and assigned readings and problem sets, studying so you can save lives, and change the future? How about saving your own life, your own future? Only when someone dies do we realize how much, in the figurative sense, we're all dying in some way of our own, all of us who live for the future but forget about now. Every day is another day that youth slips away from us, that life slips away from us. When did we forget about living in the moment? When did "taking advantage of your time" turn into extra hours of reading and not enjoying being alive? As soon as we get to college, especially here, life becomes about MCATs and LSATs, tests and papers and futures. We're forced to focus on this end result, aim for this future that we can vaguely see but are encouraged to chase with all we've got. So the good grades come, but at what price? At what moment did chasing our dreams get in the way of living life? I mean, really living?
And this is the point when I start to think, "What the hell are we doing?" Some people don't get past the age of 20, yet we go to college and work our asses off to plan for our degrees, for our recognition, for our retirement, for our cars and boats. But what about now? If we all planned for 20, how different would life be? And you sit back and wonder, "Has my life been well spent?" How many people could actually say yes? How many people could say, "I'm really happy with my life?" Most would be lying. Because although we've all had so many good times, looking back, it just doesn't seem like there have been enough. Or rather, it seems as if there were so many moments that we chose to spend doing things that in the scheme of life and death mean nothing.
I'm sick of all the mid-terms I give up going out for, for all the time given up as the price for a good future, for all the five-year plans and pathways and mindsets we've been stuck on and placed in that sometimes make us forget that these are supposed to be the best years we'll ever have. I'm sick of sacrificing now for later - aren't you? But I can't speak for everyone; some may be content with themselves. To these people: You can trick yourself into thinking you're on the right track, that you'll be able to have "fun" later in life; but you'd be kidding yourself, and you can only kid yourself for so long before it's too late and the time you had doesn't exist anymore, can't ever exist anymore. We can only hope that the moment when we ask ourselves, "Have I really lived?" comes before we've reached this point. Before we look in the mirror and realize, perhaps we haven't lived enough, perhaps we've got it all wrong. And for all those days we whiled away, for all those days we sat an extra hour at the bar, had that extra drink, partied hard all night, hung around with people we truly loved for longer than we could afford, for all those times we sacrificed the future for now - those are the moments that seem to count the most; when life is at its most real, it's most valuable, when time was best spent. It's the walk home from Royal Farms, it's 3 a.m. in the frat house basement, it's the pre-games and the late nights, it's sitting around for a two-hour dinner - it's these things that count towards being "successful" now, not successful at book life or med school, but successful at youth.
And every minute I wasted, and any point on a test I lost because of the lack of studying and every paper I could have written better but didn't because I was out: it's times like these that make all that stuff meaningless. Because when it comes down to it, college, or life for that matter, is about the memories that aren't in the library, or typing up a paper, but the things and the times you never plan to remember but always stick around. It's about the nights that seem endless, those nights where everyone seems to be having the time of their lives, when there's nowhere they'd rather be, or no one they'd rather be with, than here and now. It's about the random moments that make you stop and think, "Life is good."
The people who spend their lives preparing for that invisible something somewhere, they think they're getting ahead, they're gaining, and they'll be the best for it "in the end." But it's times like these that make you think it's the people who are out constantly enjoying life who are getting ahead, who are ahead of the world. They know something most of us don't, and, sadly, may never know. They realize you just can't let these precious days go, because once they're gone, nothing but those moments matters anymore.
Life's too short. Ask yourself what you're doing. Rest in peace, Chris Elser.
Daniella Miller is a freshman.
