Someone in my life recently told me something that I haven't been able to let go of. For the duration of this post, I'm going to call her "Patty." Patty is in her 40's. She is happily married and has two teenage children. Patty and I were talking about my future and I expressed my strong desire to be finished with school and to "start my life." Patty told me about how she remembered feeling that way. She explained how every memorable point in her life, the occasions that I am looking forward to in my life, flew by faster than she ever imagined.
Years ago, Patty bought a starter home with her husband. She moved when she got pregnant into a second home. She and her husband expected to move to a third and larger home after just a few short years. Fifteen years later, she and her husband are still in that second home. They never found the time to move. They had the means and they had the desire, but one day turned into one week and one week turned into a few months...year after year flew by and now instead of thinking about larger homes, Patty and her husband are considering downsizing because the kids will be out of the house soon. Patty got tears in her eyes when she told me about how time seems to accelerate as you get older. All of these moments that she experienced were gone before she ever took a moment to truly appreciate them.
I'm always just looking towards the next big moment. I've heard the cliche phrases: "Live in the moment," "Appreciate every day for all it is," "Don't waste today worrying about tomorrow." The problem is that my personality doesn't cater to that mindset. When I was in high school, I couldn't wait to be in college. In college, I couldn't wait to graduate. Now I'm in Law School and I can't wait to be working. I'm sure that when I'm working, I will be counting down until marriage and kids. The next step is always on my radar and the countdown until the next big thing is what dominates my days. I am constantly planning for the future. I know what I am eating for dinner, what I will be doing over the summer, and what the guest bedroom will look like in the apartment I'm moving into in August. If there was an award for planning down to the smallest detail, I would be a strong candidate for the win. It's wonderful that I have my life together in this way but am I missing out on the "living" aspect of life by thinking like this?
I'm beginning to believe that my countdowns force me to overlook my days. I don't want to be like Patty. I don't want to look back at my life when I'm 40 and get teary-eyed thinking about how fast it went. I want to appreciate everything that has yet to happen to me.
Being in a long-distance relationship has been both rewarding and challenging. Our time together is so precious. We look forward to being reunited but then the time just goes by so quickly. The past 9 months for me have been spent counting down until we're together, hardly realizing when we finally are, and then starting a new countdown without realizing what happened or where the time went when we could be together.
I just returned from a trip to visit my boyfriend in Austin, Texas. I leave my visits with him wishing that I had appreciated our time together more. Usually after a trip with him, when I look back, I realize that my head was always on our next activity. The time together flies by because I'm always ten steps ahead.
This past visit, I vowed that I would change my habits and appreciate everything instead of looking back after the trip with regret. When I was there, I had the opportunity to look forward to the next big thing. I was so excited about different dinners or events that we were going to go to and the excitement could have easily clouded the present moments. Instead, I took the time to recognize how blessed I am. I would find myself glancing at the clock and wishing for it to be time to go to our next meeting but when those thoughts came, I would force myself to instead consider how lucky I was to just be with my best friend in a grocery store line or to appreciate that we were in the same car together- something that I take for granted when I'm back in Michigan. I trained my thoughts to recognize and see my current blessings instead of think about my next desires.
It's not an easy process. I didn't know how to live in the moment when every fiber of my being wanted me to plan for the big and small parts of my future. Redirecting my thoughts took a lot of will power and even more self-awareness. I haven't solved my problem and I don't know if I'll look back with regret when I'm older. I will say though, for all you planners out there, it is possible. And it is so completely worth it. I don't feel regret about this last trip. I don't feel anxious about wanting to see him again. I'm happy and I feel blessed. I feel like my current, every-day life is amazing. Despite having to sit through Tax class, I know that in five years I will look back at this current moment, longing for the time when I was in law school. This awareness for the current moment helps me appreciate things as mundane as Tax class. I urge you to appreciate today for what it is, both the good and bad parts. Not just acknowledging the cliché phrase that you've often heard, but because you owe it to yourself to act in a way that won't cause you to think back about your past and get tears in your eyes at age 40, wishing that it all hadn't gone by so quickly.
