When I was in high school I was preparing for the future. I worried about my future job, my future family, and even my future car. Essentially, I was always thinking ahead. Recently, within the last few years, I've learned that I need to tone it down a bit. If I don't, before I know it, I'll be eighty and wonder where the time went. I've always prepared myself for the future but now that the future is here I don't know what to prepare for next. I'm in a situation where my mind tells me I have everything I ever wanted. For my whole life, that's what it's prepared for, but when I look around me, I realize that I need to live for the here and now.
If I could go back I would change a lot of things. First, I would have lived for then and not worried about my future. I would have tried to date the girls that I thought were cute, I would have focused more on my academics and been more active with athletics, and I also would have done more with my family. Part of my problem was that on top of always looking ahead, I was shy. I had a hard time making a boat load of friends and most of my friends were girls which is still true today. I had a few different girlfriends, one that I dated for what seemed like forever and others that came and went. Most of the girls I dated approached me first. There were times when I liked girls but because I was shy I wouldn't approach them. I can remember this one girl that I liked told me years later at lunch that if I had mustard up the courage to ask her out we probably would have stayed together forever but someone else got to her first. For some reason that comment stayed with me. It may have even helped me get over being shy. I was probably a senior in high school at the time but I can remember that it at least made me realize I needed to get over being shy. My other problem was that I always had it in my mind that every girl I was with was going to be my future. It never occurred to me that people would go off to college and most likely go their separate ways.
When I got to college I maintained that mind set, and honestly, I didn't stop thinking that way until recently. When I watched my brothers graduation this weekend it was like there was a music video playing in my head. I thought back to all of the things that have happened in my life that have gotten me to this point and I thought about how for so many years I just wasted a lot of time and stressed myself out because I was living for the future and not the here and now. I really think that if I could start high school again tomorrow I'd be much happier. Because I've gone through the transitions and have been able to see how it would turn out, I feel like I would be able to go back and live for the moment. Obviously, that's never going to be a possibility and I'll have to live the rest of my life knowing that I pretty much rushed my way through life up to this point, but at least I'll be able to share my story with my children so that hopefully they don't make the same mistake that I did.
I was always looking ahead but I just could never see what was right in front of me. I rushed my way through high school, college, and even into my job. Am I happy? Absolutely. I have a fantastic family and a great job but was I happy before I got to this point? Probably not. I wasn't a very happy person through high school even though I showed that I was on the outside. I wasn't even happy through college. I did things that made me happy but in general I was not. I had a goal that was and continued to be building my future and until I got it, I wasn't going to be happy. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I thought that way and I wish I didn't. It might have been the pressures of always hearing people say "plan for your future" and I may have just taken it so literally that it was making me sick or it may have been just me thinking that's what life was all about.
What I've learned in recent years is that's not what life is all about. Life is about living for the moment and being happy in doing whatever it is you choose to do. I made decisions and based them on the Nathan ten-to-fifteen years down the road instead of basing them on the Nathan of then. Now, here it is ten-to-fifteen years down the road and I'm realizing that a chunk of my life flew by and there's so many people, places, and things that I missed out on. As I grow older, and realize that I made those mistakes, I realize now that I'm here I don't know what to prepare for next. Thinking about it, honestly, there's nothing to prepare for next. I need to take life as it comes and not worry about what's next. Life will happen and unlike I did in the past, I'm going to start living for the here and now. Will you join me?
