I've been reflecting on this big event in my life a bit recently, which has led me to have a very interesting thought about life. Worry is just not worth it. I got that from reflecting on my high school reunion!
I remember one time in elementary school, it must have been fifth or sixth grade, when someone mentioned how many years we still had before we would graduate high school. It seemed like it would never get there. I already hated school at that point, and I just longed to be done with it. The thought that I still had another six, seven, maybe even eight years at that point until I was done with high school seemed unbearable. And that didn't even include college. I just didn't know how I was going to survive.
As the years got closer, I got more and more anxious to graduate. It's not that I hated MY particular school or the people in it. I certainly wasn't cool or popular by any stretch of the imagination, but (other than a few minor incidents) I wasn't really bullied or picked on. I'm actually very grateful to have attended D'Evelyn High School. I think that it was a good fit for me. My problem was that I just didn't like school. I'm just not very good at it. I felt like I had to work hard to achieve mediocre grades, and that was very discouraging for me. Because of that, I didn't really have the motivation to do much work, which led to worse grades. Basically, school just wasn't my strength.
I worried a lot about school back then. Well, I worried a lot about school up until I graduated from college! And now it is a thing of my past. For so many years I looked ahead at what I would have, what I would get one day. It's amazing to me that in one day, I graduated, and my life changed completely. Almost everything that I had ever known was changed, and my life would never be the same.
Now I have a different life. I have the post-college-graduation life where I am working, paying a mortgage, and feeding a dog every day. And yet I still find myself looking forward. I look to the day when I will be married. I look to the day when I will have a new car. I look to the day when I will be a world traveler (which happens to be very soon!). I look to the day when I retire. And once those things happen, my life will again change. But until then, why worry about it? Most of those things will probably happen one day. And if they don't, worrying about them won't make them happen.
Time flies too quickly. There are no guarantees. It seems like yesterday that I thought that I would never graduate high school, but it happened ten years ago now! How much of my time was spent worrying about graduating? That worry didn't make it go any faster. And if it had, what would I have missed? I probably would have missed a lot of good.
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| In 2003: My high school senior picture |
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| In 2013: Getting ready for Father Kris's Ordination |
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