just eat the damn cake
Some of you are still ”it” from a game of childhood tag. It never occurred to you at the moment but that would be the last game of tag you would ever play. None of us are guaranteed another game of tag, another opportunity, or another day.
Most of my audience is in college or beyond so for the sake of simplicity let’s assume that you are 20 years old and will live to be 75 years old. To put things in perspective this means that you have lived for 1,040 weeks out of your 3,900 total weeks of living. You spent the first 18 years or 936 weeks largely with your parents. How much time do you think you will spend with them from now onwards?
What if I told you that you have likely already spent around 95% of all the time that you would spend with them for the rest of your life. The average person spends roughly two weeks every year with their parents which encapsulates the holidays and most leisurely visits. Assuming your parents live for half of the rest of your life, you’ll spend just another mere 57 weeks with them. This comes out to just over 5% of the total time you’ll spend with them. This realization came as an enormous shock to me. I tend to traverse my life with an aura of eternal youth and invincibility, an assumption that I will have boundless opportunity and infinite chances. However, that’s not the case and it’s grounding to be reminded of my own mortality and limitations once in a while. Maybe give your mom a call after you read this post.
An attitude that was implanted into me at a young age was to delay gratification and invest in myself so I could have a better future. However, for me and many of my peers we may have gone too far and turned a good principle into a horrible mistake. There must be a balance between setting yourself up for success in the future and enjoying your youth. A lot of my time is spent planning and working towards a better future whether that be studying or working. I’ve heard it so many times now, the pain you feel today is the gain you’ll receive tomorrow, endure the suffering now and enjoy the fullness of life later. These ideas create nothing but a toxic and self-deprecating mindset and romanticize working hard to the point of suffering and pain. Working hard doesn’t have to look like sleepless nights and never having fun. I have never understood why enjoying the moment and setting myself up for success are mutually exclusive. There is an infinite amount of joy to be had, and tapping into it now won’t diminish the future. Surely I have the capacity to both enjoy myself now while creating a better future for myself.
The one thing that can never be reclaimed is time, so just eat the damn cake and enjoy it because if you don’t… well cake goes bad.
