The buffer between adolescence and adulthood
By NEVAEH KARRAKER — nakarraker@ucdavis.edu
Time is both our greatest ally and our biggest constraint.
There’s never enough of it, and we’ll never be satisfied. We desperately try to grasp at time, as we watch it slip between our fingertips like water. If only we could have more time before the coldness of grief seeps in, before we succumb to phase changes — before it’s “too late.”
There’s this inherent pressure we feel about the concept of aging and the erosion of familiarity, which creates a need to prove something to time — that we can and will beat it. We acknowledge the imbecility of it, and yet we still try; we’d rather fail at the things we love than fail by never taking the chance. In this way, life is too short to be “realistic.” Instead, we’re optimistic in our delusions that the pursuit of our goals is feasible and that contentment surely should follow. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.
University is a constant internal battle of comparison — the feeling of always falling behind everyone else, whether it’s in our careers, grades, relationships or any other parts of our lives that we may envy. But in this comparison, we forget the beautiful, paradoxical nature of time; we forget the luxury of it.
Time is precious. It’s one of the most valuable things we have, incomparable to material wealth. None of us possess the same amount. The stress that we feel about this lack of time redirects our attention away from the reality that we’re actually in the middle of everything we once prayed for.
So, we need to become comfortable in our discomfort — without it, we cannot grow. Our discomfort with time is just proof of the progress we’ve already endured. More importantly, we need to appreciate this chapter in our lives. We’re never going to get it back, and while this reality is melancholic, it’s also a luxury. There’s beauty in the fact that bad things pass, that we have time to prepare for a future, and that we can live every fleeting moment to its fullest possible extent.
To do this, we need to fully extrapolate the position that’s been handed to us. Even if we’re not exactly where we want to be, our life is only imprisoned in our minds. By converting our daily routines, our diurnal worries and our demure hobbies into small experiences — simply by mindset — we’ll find our lives rich in passion, curiosity and laughter. Those are the moments that we’ll look back on and wish to savor with the full intensity of our senses.
Many of those who surround us who have different goals will tell us that the decisions we make are a waste of time, especially while in college. That narrative is wrong. Being a full-time student sometimes means forfeiting certain opportunities that others have (like traveling), but in no way should we be ashamed of the ambition we have or the things we relish. In the same way that we each have our own allotment of time on this Earth, we also get to control how we spend it.
One thing we do have as college students is flexibility; we’re incredibly lucky to have the luxury of time to bask in as we figure out our careers, identities and communities. If we’re dissatisfied with what we’ve accomplished or the way that we’ve lived, that mental tension should push us to strive for better. And yet, the constant approach of time is terrifying: What if we choose the wrong path?
Being right should never be the goal; perfection is the enemy of progress. There is no “right” path, and, even if there was, ponder this: Is it really such a terrible thing to stumble or dabble in small samples of life? In trial and error, we accumulate lessons, skills and a deep love for challenge — not a museum of enervating failures. With persistence, we’ll eventually discern that the path we take twists and bends and leads us exactly where we were meant to be, bestowing us with a collection of memories along the way.
If we define living based solely upon our accomplishments, we’re never truly living. Nothing is a waste if it’s about experience. Let the time that you do have be enough.
Written by: Nevaeh Karraker—nakarraker@ucdavis.edu
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