Life Spent too Quickly
By Abbey Moland
I have a silent, hidden longing for the days of fat crayons, immense decisions regarding chocolate or white milk, morning snack times and tooth loss competitions, days when the power of wearing a pair of plastic, pink slip-ons could negate any bad day, and evenings when 8 p.m. bedtimes, preceded by a stack of Bernstein Bear books, were regarded as heavenly. Somewhere among the weeds of time and growing up, life has evolved into a dizzy jam of papers, projects, tests, progress reports, stress and meetings, fueling and refueling my car only to shove off onto the next shores which beseech my habitual, exhausted arrivals. Often, I ask myself where the time has gone and I ponder when those sands within the hourglass could have so casually slipped through my fingers.
Traditionally, Marian girls pursue it all, instinctively seeking to achieve and be the best in everything. A typical day-in-the-life perspective might encompass an early wake-up call to finish a Works Cited page for that five paragraph essay or to go through those problem sets one last time, followed by a rigorous slew of lectures, classroom discussions and yes, actual thinking.
Oh, but a day could never be complete at 3:10 p.m. ...off to practice, to work, to meetings until finally stumbling in the door well after dark, only to attack that mile-long list in that little blue assignment notebook. And then the grand finale: a "good" night's sleep of hours that can be counted on one hand while visions of Beowulf characters, polyatomic ions, preterite conjugations, and Newton's theory of relativity dance through our heads...only to wake up a short time later to do it all again.
Now, the real shock: it doesn't get any easier. This phenomenal pace is and will forever be the nature of our culture. The world runs on a schedule, but sometimes our lives don't have to. There are windows amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday hysteria, minute moments we must savor and capture for our own reflection. These little slices of freedom, which belong only to us, will shape us into who we are and define our lives, not the meetings or the schedules we maintain from day to day. But, it is up to us to take the time each day, to soak it all in, and bask in the comfort and the wonder of life, to contemplate our purpose, our motives, our mission, and to determine what end our means might procure.
I crave the dominance of simplicity, the era of youthful bliss of a day when the only thing on schedule are meals and afternoon naps. But the yesterdays have passed in fond memories and outgrown elastic-waist jeans and leg warmers. My life rushes before me, a string of moments and memories of precious high school years not meant to be lived so quickly. And for a brief moment, I sit in silence holding and tasting that grain within the hourglass, oblivious to the world and its agendas . . .treasuring the time and the reverence of my life.