Hannah Pierce, Year 10
And yet again we find ourselves knee deep in another half term. Another 4-6 week countdown that seems to go on forever, until you look back and can't remember one thing you did, learned or thought about. But that’s fine because soon it will be the holidays. And everything’s better once it’s the holidays, right?
I've only just come to realise how much time we spend looking forward. Forward to the next holiday, or to the Amazon package that still hasn’t arrived yet. And when the thing I’m waiting for does happen, it’s never quite as good as it seemed. I spend holiday after holiday sitting on the sofa watching random YouTube videos until I’m bored sick, and then suddenly it's the last Sunday before school and I’ve accomplished nothing.
Now, don't get me wrong. Looking forward can be exciting and inspiring, and it isn't a bad thing to have hopes, dreams and goals. But there is one problem with the future. By looking forward, we can create an idealistic world where everything is perfect and every problem will be sorted. We can tell ourselves that it’s fine because then we'll look better, do better or feel better. Sadly, that’s not how it usually goes. The future will become the present quicker than you realise until you're left with a long list of jobs and work to do because you thought you'd be more efficient, more capable, or more happy. Very often, I move tasks from needing to do it now to doing it in a few hours, relying on the unrealistic idea that I’ll actually want to do it then. How do we fix this? Well first, I think it starts with acceptance. Acceptance that things won't improve in a click of the fingers, instead improvement will build up until you're standing on a mountain. Acceptance that who you are now is enough, and that there is nothing and no one you need to change for. Acceptance that the work will still need to be done if you leave it for an hour, a day or a week.
On the other side of the present is the past. The memories of things you've already done and completed. However, I think humans have become very good at distorting the past into what they want to see. A happy memory won't have any bad bits in it because we don’t want to remember those bits, but a sad memory will be full of them. Reminiscing the days in the past can create unrealistic expectations for the present and future because we don't realise we have selected the parts we want to remember. And the thing is, many people live like that. Always looking behind them, wishing they were back in the time before COVID, or the years at primary when the workload was so much lighter. However, we must remember that there will be no day the same as another, and by looking back the present tends to slip through our fingers. There are opportunities to be taken and fun to be had right now, so let’s create more memories rather than dwelling on the old.
Which brings me back to the fraction of time wedged between the past and the future. The ever-changing, vacillating present. By the time you've finished reading this sentence, the time we call the present will have changed. It’s the now. And because it’s so small, it’s probably the hardest time to live in. But this is the time you can control. If you work with what you have and you take a step back, I think you’ll see endless opportunities to find happiness, excitement and joy. But it is important to also remember those bad bits. The struggle, the defeat and the tears. Because then when the hard work pays off and the tears weren’t for nothing we can say to ourselves, ‘I did that. It was hard, but I did it.’
The present is yours to define. So go on, get off the couch, look around and do that thing you have been putting off.
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