by Jada Belser

If I have one operating philosophy about life, it is this — life goes by so quickly. Without realizing it, you just look up in the time already past you.

“Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” 

– Ferris Bueller

We always have to be so serious about everything, never having fun or acting wild for the hopes of making other people happy, mostly our parents. It makes me think about everything I did in the beginning of freshman year, always home, never out. Stressing about school work or grades. That wasn’t living, just merely existing.

Until one day I did. 

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the beginning of my junior year.

“Before we let these worries drown us, let’s just look around for a while.”

My friends wanted to go to the Jeff versus Floyd Central football game — theme Frat. We all made a plan to dress fratty. Jean shorts, long sleeve button up, strip tie, drawn-on mustaches. A little basic, yes, but still, it was the greatest time I ever had. We took pictures, laughed, joked around and got “sendy” like frat boys do. 

We didn’t stay at the game after Floyd had scored 12-0 — we knew we were going to lose. So we went to Sundae Paradise ice cream across the street. We stayed there for a while, then left to go to Vissing Park. When we arrived at the park, the feeling of the night felt different. A good kind of different — electric even.

As we walked around in the woods area near Vissing Park with our flashlights, we laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe because it was so dark. It was better to laugh it off then worry so much on the matter.

We all got tired of walking and running, so we went to sit at the park. My friend Zoe and I sat on swings, seeing who could swing the farthest. Eventually, we stopped and started to feel sick as we slowed down and swayed back in further on the swings.

I looked around and saw all my friends talking and laughing. Then it hit me that this is what I’m going to remember most from high school. Not all the tests or the drama. These are the people that make life worth living and make my “high school experience”  feel like a dream. These are the people I hope I get to grow into adulthood with.

When we look back on these memories as adults and future college graduates, we’re not going to remember what score we got on the SATs or the grade-point average we had.

We’re going to remember these key moments in our lives that really shape who we become as a person. We only live once. We will only be this young once in this era of time.

Before the worries about college and jobs, or the fear of choosing the wrong college major, or possibly getting a job we may hate…

Or becoming like our parents, jumping from job to job and living from paycheck to paycheck…

Or working ourselves to death just to make a decent living…

Before we let these worries drown us, let’s just look around for a while.