Comprised Countdowns
By Stephanie Snay | Staff Writer
How many days until summer? I’m sure by now you are pulling out your phone or planner and you have a countdown of the days. We all do it; I see these countdowns everywhere. They are on the marker boards on the doors of everyone in my hallway. You can find them in everyone’s Facebook status. I know I count down the weeks until school is out, but why? We are so eager to have the days end that we don’t even enjoy them while they are here.
Life compromises many countdowns. There is always something we are counting down to whether it is a short-term or a long-term countdown.
We all have short-term countdowns. Once school starts, the countdown begins to Christmas Break. After Christmas, we mark off our calendars until Spring Break . Once Spring Break is over, it is a short stretch to summer. As soon as summer begins, I personally find myself counting down to my birthday.
I’ve reached many milestones by counting down the days. Even though I have reached a point in my life I always wished for, I would do anything to go back in time to when I was 10 years old and be able to spend a day with my late mother.
There are a plethora of memories and moments I wish I could freeze, yet at the time I was living them, I was probably counting down the days.
In the words of Meredith Grey of Grey’s Anatomy, “We’re adults. When did that happen? And how do we make it stop?”
Life is very short and extremely fast-paced. Sometimes, it moves so fast I feel like I could miss something if I just blink. To focus on the present, when all we are doing is thinking about the future, is difficult. We get our minds stuck in countdown mode. However, each day we take for granted is a day we can never get back.
For all the seniors who are counting down until summer, these are the last days of your college careers. It is time to go into the real world and hopefully start a career you enjoy with the knowledge you gained. Do you want to remember the last days of college as the days you enjoyed or do you want them all to be a blur?
I challenge everyone to stop counting down, stop looking at the clock five times each half hour and stop wishing time away. Enjoy life in the present and take each day as a new opportunity. When you wake up in the morning, be happy and feel blessed that you have another day, rather than mope that you have to get through the day.
