{"id":14406,"date":"2015-03-19T12:41:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T17:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=14406"},"modified":"2015-03-19T15:03:29","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T20:03:29","slug":"the-art-of-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2015\/03\/19\/the-art-of-waiting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think it\u2019s safe to assume that time, to most people, is a very valuable thing. If it weren\u2019t, then I don\u2019t believe social media would offer as many hashtags describing the same idea of carpe diem <\/em>as it currently does.<\/p>\n

The truth is, IMSA students are young. And that\u2019s probably the reason we find ourselves on the cusp of every adventure, wanting to etch it into a new story to carry with us. We\u2019re wanderers and dreamers, because at this age, we have the ability to say that reality hasn\u2019t yet eroded our mindsets and instilled the cynicism that precedes a mid-life crisis.<\/p>\n

At least, that\u2019s what we all want to believe, right?<\/p>\n

We constantly hear this idea of living rather than just existing \u2013 to take advantage of every moment and live it as if it were our last. Unfortunately, I\u2019ve come to find that this concept is becoming more an elusive desire than the truth. We\u2019ve found ourselves lacking this mindset because we\u2019re waiting for a day to truly live. Our days, it seems, are compounded with busywork and life’s other nuisances. <\/p>\n

Since sophomore year, I have been subconsciously promising myself the freedom of \u201clater.\u201d I promised myself that after I do this, this, and this, I can finally take a step back to enjoy myself. I was raised to understand that school work is priority and that everything else resides on a lower rung of the ladder. Now, of course, this is probably true for a lot of us\u2026 mainly because, well, school work (or whatever it is that you do) is<\/em> important.<\/p>\n

But the problem isn\u2019t necessarily in what we decide takes precedence over other things. Rather, the issue is that we are so engulfed by this tunnel vision that we begin to push off the little things for some ambiguous time that we can only label as \u201clater.\u201d\u00a0I have used the over-hyped glorification of a \u201csecond-semester life\u201d as a sort of subconscious reward and continued to believe that I could finally let go when it finally arrived. However, one quarter in, I still don\u2019t feel the degree of relaxation that I promised myself.<\/p>\n

This might be because I probably haven\u2019t been seeking the yolo life as much as other people. But I honestly believe this is also because life doesn\u2019t just end <\/em>all of a sudden. The work, the stress, the pressure don\u2019t just disappear. We can trick ourselves all we want into thinking that there\u2019s an endpoint to our lives \u2013 a point where we can definitively say that there is no longer overarching purpose to work towards anymore. But truthfully, I would say we\u2019re pulling wool over our own eyes.<\/p>\n

As a result, our personal bucket lists only grow longer and we find ourselves unable to complete any of the things we promised we would. We\u2019re unable because there will never truly be a break in our lives. The journey ahead is interminable, but we ignore this by promising that one day, we\u2019ll get around to our dreams when we\u2019re \u201cdone\u201d.<\/p>\n

I, personally, don’t want to live like this. Because 70 years from now, when you can\u2019t remember what it\u2019s like to have an 18 year old\u2019s heart, you\u2019ll wish that you hadn\u2019t spent your whole life waiting. You\u2019ll wish you hadn\u2019t made so many promises about later, and you\u2019ll wish you would had just done it in the now. But unfortunately, in a society defined by this workaholism and endless rank-climbing, we subject ourselves to these empty promises because they are our motivation to keep going. Suddenly, we become the Estragons and Vladimirs of this world and our lack of contentment is held at the mercy of Beckett\u2019s nihilistic world. We become the ones waiting for something that might never come.<\/p>\n

Of course, that doesn’t mean we should begin living with reckless abandon and throw caution to the wind. (Even though, occasionally, it makes for a good story.) What it means is we shouldn\u2019t promise ourselves the satisfaction of relaxing by waiting until some higher priority is completed. Honestly, we\u2019ll always have a goal dangling in front of us, but that shouldn\u2019t stop us from truly living. So, I think we should promise ourselves one thing \u2013 to stop procrastinating the little things, because we all deserve that break in the now\u2026 and not the later.<\/p>\n

(featured image: http:\/\/www.cochonnetmarin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/261-carpe-diem-2-sw-1.jpg)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it\u2019s safe to assume that time, to most people, is a very valuable thing. If it weren\u2019t, then I don\u2019t believe social media…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":14407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2316],"class_list":["post-14406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14406"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14435,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14406\/revisions\/14435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14406"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}