A Moment of Unlimited
After moving out of Moore Hall freshman year, I went and stayed with my brother at his place for two nights before having to make the trek back to St. Louis. Navigation estimated the trip to be 15 hours in total. I remember the morning of, I woke up abnormally early on the living room couch at 6am before my alarm went off. I had an hour to go before I scheduled myself to leave, but I could not and would not fall asleep. I browsed the internet on my iPhone 4 before I told my brother I was leaving for St. Louis to stay with Mom and Dad for the summer. I went to the Burger King drive thru and ordered a small breakfast. I was off from there. A few highlights from the trip include napping for an hour in the parking lot of a Wendy’s in Knoxville, fantasizing about multiple crushes to multiple songs on my iPod, and drinking a lot of Red Bull and Gatorade. As I pulled into familiar territory, I passed Busch Stadium and turned my music off. I lowered my windows to smell beer and hear the roar of fans cheering on the Cardinals. I knew I was close to home. 40 minutes later I was reunited with my parents. I thought I’d be tired, but due to the excess Red Bull I’d consumed over the past 13 hours, I stayed up until 5am the next morning laying in bed staring at the pitch-black ceiling until my eyes were greeted with the premature stages of dawn. While I was pulling into the subdivision, I thought to myself how the trip was over already. Yes, it was long. Yes, driving stretches of 275 miles is no fun. Yes, there were a lot of ‘how much longer’ thoughts that crossed my mind, but honestly, in the few moments before I arrived, I came to the realization it wasn’t as bad as I thought it out going to be beforehand. I could’ve drove longer had I needed to, so much so I may not have wanted the drive to end.
The same thing happens at any shift of any job I’ve worked at. When I was younger, I used to work at a burger joint called Andy’s off highway 55 in Apex (ironically Andy’s is now named Highway 55). I would pull doubles on weekends, but every Saturday I would work from 10:30am-11:00pm. From open to close, the shifts were 12 hours plus. I couldn’t wait to get out some nights, but as soon as I walked out the doors to lock up, the shift didn’t seem too bad. There was one shift specifically I remember. One of my coworkers’ name was Tom. If I had to guess, Tom was 7-8 years older than me. We were in the middle of a rush, but everyone working in the restaurant was having a good time. The energy was at an all-time high, it was like we were getting paid to have fun. Tom caught on to this and told me to take a look around. He said this most likely will be the last time everyone is here working together. As prophetic as it sounded, it ended up being true. Tom quit within the next couple of weeks, and I left soon thereafter. That shift proved to be the last time we were all together.
Albeit the learning curve was rough during the beginning weeks, there’s a lot of challenges I’ve had to become accustomed to facing being back in school. I’m taking a writing intensive course, organic chemistry, an organic chemistry lab, physics, as well as biology. Wednesdays are my long days. I’m on campus from 2pm to 10pm. It’s a drag going in, because getting out alive after frying your brain for 8 hours is seemingly impossible. Safe to say, hump days are the worst. Paying attention helps the passing of time tremendously, which is something I should be doing regardless. I’m left with the impression at the end of lab reflecting on how I’m glad my day is over.
There was a saying on the internet I saw some time ago that questioned the lives of people who looked forward to the weekends on a weekly-basis. How satisfying were their lives? Were they happy? Did they feel fulfilled? With regards to living, the argument was they were wasting their lives away. I believe we do things like this much more often than we want to believe. Wasting time is something so easy to do we don’t realize it and by the time we do, we avoid whatever regret we feel by continuing to do the same things that got us there in the first place by justification of cognitive dissonance. Truth be told, we don’t have all the time in the world. Yes, think things out, but act in the moment. We must live and we must learn. A sentiment I ask you to remember is the only way to learn is to live. There are no shortcuts, although at times I wish there were. I’m not writing this from a place of infinite knowledge and wisdom, I’m simply writing from a place of reflection in an effort to proactively minimize regrets for myself in the future.
If you’re reading this, I hope you have the courage to live a life you’re proud of. I hope the Universe gives you signs, and God gives you guidance. May your mind be free from all outside criticism and negative feedback. Enjoying life in the moment is a movement I hope we all get to be a part of in this lifetime of ours. Look forward to things, but don’t forget to enjoy the now. The same way I pulled into St. Louis thinking I wouldn’t have minded driving longer is the same way I think people feel at the end of their lives. They spent so much time looking forward until they couldn’t look forward any more, so they look backward and come to the conclusion they wish they wouldn’t have spent so much time passing life by. Except when that happens, there’s not any roads left to drive, nor are there any destinations to drive to. There are plenty of details to enjoy that we overlook. Working at Andy’s, building relationships and friendships were worth more than the paychecks. I met Kellz there, I met B there, I met Kyle there, I could never regret any hour I worked at Andy’s. Trading food for donuts and coolata’s at the Dunkin’ Donuts next door was too clutch. Driving from Raleigh to St. Louis gave me time to reflect and see a bunch of neat things on the way home. Passing classes and sitting through new material for 8 hours seems impossible, but there’s not a night I don’t do it. Wednesdays at school are more than academics and homework, though. I enjoy being alone around people. I enjoy the tangents my physics professor goes on because he wants the class to be applicable. Although we don’t know each other very well, I enjoy my short conversations with a girl I have all three of my classes with on Wednesday. She’s 25 like me, which makes me feel not so old around our other classmates. The details are here already. All we must do is take a little more time looking around, and we’ll find things to enjoy and appreciate in the time being.
This leaves me with two conclusions. One, often times it’s our perception of limits which limit us rather than limits themselves, and two, perhaps we’d rather be here in more ways than we’d like to give ourselves credit for.