Exhaustion and boredom have been ornamenting my dialogues recently. I get asked how my day has been, and without even thinking, I respond with “Tiring.” I come home to my roommates and all of our conversations about school conclude with “I need a break so bad.” At this point of the semester, I don’t recall a single day where I did not overhear the statement “I can’t wait until the semester is over.”
Whenever I secretly wish for time to pass quickly so that I get to have some rest on a weekend or do something I’m looking forward to, it feels like a sin. I feel ungrateful; the burden of not knowing the value of the time I have at my hands crushes my soul.
Sometimes I imagine my future self in her death bed as an old lady with a glass of water right next to her, one that feels far because she no longer has the strength to reach and get a refreshing sip. The thought of finding myself in that position with a mental list of everything I didn’t get to do or every memory I won’t get to relive might be my biggest fear. Yet, I should realize the innate value of something without having to think about the future and a life where I lost it.
I remind myself to live in the present. When I look into the mirror and get disappointed to see my never-ending teenage acne, I attempt to not find my antidote in comparing my acne to the wrinkles that will traverse and crack my skin in 20 years. I decide to feel grateful for my pimples and blemishes because they are an indication that I still hold piles of time at my fingertips — right at that very moment.
The thought of those piles stopped me from wishing for the semester to end. I don’t voice these thoughts while responding to someone who is telling me their desire for the future to be here already. I mostly keep my silence or give a blanket response, yet deep down I want to get on my knees and beg them to stop making such vile wishes, because even now I find myself stumbling while trying to catch time.
Little monotonous tasks I complete become my new seconds, minutes and hours. Getting the reminder to take my vitamins everyday, washing my laundry every week and submitting my assignments every month serve as solid evidence that the time heaps I fought to preserve had depleted. I can’t help but think “Has it already been this much time since I’ve last done this?” whenever I encounter the same daily, weekly or monthly task I have to fulfill in my to-do list.
However, not every grain of time that slips away from my heaps means a loss. Maybe I’m so stuck with the idea of slowing down or altogether stopping time that I don’t look back to recognize what I’ve achieved in exchange for the units of time I’ve given up in the process. Maybe I don’t appreciate the healthy body I’ve built thanks to the daily vitamins, the warm clothes I’ve acquired by doing my chores and the progress I’ve made by staying on track with school.
After all, the question goes beyond whether we want this semester to end or not. The semester will end either way, and the solution is to find the middle ground — neither being too excited for the future to replace the present nor fearing the present to dissipate into the past. Neither shaking our hands carelessly to force the grains from the piles to fall nor attempting to build brick walls around them to confine them.
I know that I promised myself to not get too stuck looking into the future, but I still hope that, if I succeed in keeping up this attitude, the old lady I imagined will tell her farewell to the world with no regrets in mind. Hopefully, she will look back to the life she lived with satisfaction and be thankful that she befriended time, rather than viewing it as an enemy.
Buse Koldas is a sophomore from Istanbul, Turkey majoring in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She is the Voices Editor for The News-Letter. Her column discusses how her past experiences have affected her, with the hope of making others feel seen and understood.
