“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.” – Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

The first work I read for my American Lit class this semester was Saul Bellow’s 1956 novella, Seize the Day. In the book, the main character suffers from a midlife crisis in which he must confront his past mistakes in order to have a second chance at a happy future. Although predictable, Bellow teaches the reader an important lesson: You can either watch life pass you by or you can own up to its challenges.

This message, although far from original, is the mantra I must live by if I’m going to survive the next forty days. I say survive because a rocky path lies ahead. Despite a school career full of scholastic achievement, I somehow find myself falling short academically. I am plagued by incomplete assignments and a senior thesis that just doesn’t seem to want to write itself. For years, I’ve maintained leadership positions in various extracurricular activities and right now, none of them matter like they used to. Despite my lack of enthusiasm, a series of obligations continue to stare me in the face. In regards to family and friends, important and meaningful relationships are being neglected because the bulk of my emotions lie elsewhere – with someone else. There are tons of variables coming into play on a multitude of levels; I am daunted by the potential of the future, overwhelmed by the unknown, and dazed by the passage of time. To say I suffer from senioritis would be an understatement. I’m jaded by the weight of the world and its expectations and consequently, I find myself paralyzed by my own paranoia.

I ask myself how I’ve gotten to this point, and I don’t know where to begin. I just read an article from the NY Times about the pressures of high-achieving girls in high school and I want to scream. The headline reads, “For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect Too.” This is the type of message that I’ve silently succumbed to my entire life, one that is engrained in my head a thousand times over. Like the girls in the article, I worked hard in high school because I wanted to attend a competitive university (Luckily, I didn’t have to deal with this year’s applicant pool). I got into my first choice early decision and here I am today, trying to graduate a year ahead of schedule.

In the article, one of the girls wrote a list of wants and goals:

“To write a novel. Own a (red) Jeep Wrangler. Get into college. Name her firstborn daughter Carmen. Go to carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Learn to surf. Live in a Spanish-speaking country. Learn to play the doppio movimiento of Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat. Own a dog. Be a bridesmaid. Vote for president. Write a really good poem. Never get divorced.”

Whoever she is, she reminds me of myself circa 2004. I made a list just like hers, only mine read more like the following:

“Get into a good school. Write a best-selling novel. Travel to all 50 states. Live abroad for at least a year. Be fluent in 4 different languages (pig latin doesn’t count). Learn to play another instrument besides the piano. Meet Justin Timberlake. Change someone’s life for the better. Cure Cancer. Take cooking classes. Get married.”

I used to believed the world was mine for the taking. Somewhere along the way I lost sight of that. It’s not that I no longer have goals, believe me, I have tons. I just don’t have the same confidence and clarity that I used to. As much as I want to make a laundry list of every single possible want I have for myself, I know better now because for every want, I need a plan, a back up plan, and a back up for my back up plan. Everything’s gotten harder as I’ve gotten older and right now, all that I’ve ever done up until this point is insignificant in the sense that it won’t get me past the next month.

I need to snap out of this funk that I’m in and keep going.

All I can do is take this one step at a time, one day at a time.

Carpe diem.