About 100 weeks ago, I sent in my very first article. I remember the entire experience in vivid detail. I remember writing it, editing it, proudly presenting it to my parents. Some people might remember reading it in the paper: “Smiles for Sale: Two for the Price of One”. So much has happened since that distant week in seventh grade. I went through eighth grade, began high school, and learned so much along the way.
Time is an odd thing. It’s hard to measure, and never seems to stay consistent. Years rush by in the blink of an eye, while some days seem to creep along. I can remember being in eighth grade, feeling like the weeks would never end. I wrote an article about it, about the endless feeling of those last few months in Germantown Hills Middle School. But now, looking back, it feels like that entire year flew by in an instant.
Problems that seem so important and unsolvable now will soon pass us by. Before we know it, it will be three years from now, and those problems will be part of a distant past, one that we can remember in clips and flashes. I can recall the problems I was having when I look back and read any of those 100 articles, and I can remember how much they were bothering me. I thought I would never get over the obstacles I was facing. And now, looking back, I still remember how much they affected me, but I wonder if I should have let them bother me that much.
Should we really let things that will soon be memories affect us so much? There doesn’t seem to be much of a point in stressing over problems that we won’t even remember after a while. Whenever I have a problem, I tend to let it take over my life. I forget to look at the big picture, and stop thinking about how tiny the problem actually is in comparison to everything in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps if I kept this in mind, the problems in my life wouldn’t seem so bad.
On the other hand, we can’t just stop caring. If I tried to live a stress free life, I wouldn’t be in Tae Kwon Do, or taking piano lessons, or involved in marching band. I probably wouldn’t even be writing articles. The things that can be stressful are usually worth the work you have to put into them, and that’s why we participate in them. But maybe life would be easier, and happier, if we were able to recognize that life is fleeting, time is unpredictable, and in three years, the problems that seem so huge now won’t seem so bad.
About 100 weeks ago, I sent in my first article. I was in seventh grade, worrying about improv speeches, the project we had to complete in science, and the current event reports that were assigned in history. Looking back, the problems I had weren’t as horrible as I had made them out in my mind, and probably didn’t deserve that much stress and anxiety. Always remember that just like our past problems, which seem so easy in comparison, our problems and stresses right now are solvable. And 100 weeks from now, we’ll hardly remember they happened. See you next week!
“Reprinted from Hagel Publications, Inc. dba as Courier Newspapers”