...and two weeks to go!

Listening to: Rolling in the Deep by Adele   
Currently drinking: Starbucks Double Short Mocha

So starting today I officially have two weeks until I depart for Japan, and it's really nerve wrecking! All my paperwork is done, so I am pretty much playing the waiting game until the 16th. To get through these final weeks I have decided to fully commit myself to finishing the quarter strong. Right now I am in the process of putting together the final portfolio for my Writing Capstone class, which basically just consists of all the papers I've written this quarter. My professor handed me back one of my essay drafts today and told me that I should try and submit the final version to be featured in the new edition of the book we are reading in class, so (just for funzies) I am going to post it here for you all to read and see what you think. Happy reading!

I believe in clocks; that time passes. It can go zooming by or it can slow to an insufferable crawl, but it always continues on. As the pendulum swings back and forth, so does the rhythm of life. Babies will be born, children will learn to take their first steps, young men and women will reach adulthood, fall in love, get married, raise their own children, and eventually die. Nations may fall while others rise to greatness, technologies change as does the weather, yet time continues on.

It has taken me twenty-one years to realize the truth in the old saying “patience is a virtue.” My impatience with time led me to believe that I would never grow up; never get to join the world of adults that had so much “freedom.” My mother once told me that, when I was two years old, I would follow her around the house asking her when it was going to be my birthday. We have a picture in one of our family albums of me standing in front of a banner saying, “Shaina, you’re finally three!”

 For a while I thought that time stood still, and that I would be stuck in pre-pubescent hell forever. I pictured life flashing by me: my peers growing up, gaining interests, boyfriends, etc… but I always saw myself as stationary, as if no amount of force could make me gain any inertia towards a future. I was all potential energy, yet had no where to go.

Stopwatches, alarms, timers, clocks all tried to remind me of the fact that I, in fact, was moving forward through time, but I was deaf. I could see the hands moving: minute by minute, second by second, but I never understood the importance of the rhythmic little “tic, tic, tic…”

           It wasn’t until I turned seventeen that I realized that time was speeding up. That was the year I graduated high school, picked out a college, ended one long term relationship, and began a second. Things were happening, I wasn’t paying attention, and time flew by. Suddenly, I had moved out of my parents’ house and began life as a “grownup.” College was soon upon me. Classes consumed the daytime, while bills, boyfriends, and roller-coaster friendships ate away my nights. I suddenly went from living life at a stop still to proceeding full speed ahead into a future that I hadn’t even conceptualized as possible. In the same way that some people get motion sickness, I started to feel the sickness of hurtling through time.

I hid myself in my room, trapped in the darkness, refusing to believe the world outside was spinning steadily on its axis. I went through daily routines, but could not get myself to really look and see what life had to offer. Oddly enough, it wasn’t light that helped push me back into the world, but sound. Even in the gloom of my room I could still hear the sound of cars driving by, the chirruping of birds, and laughter. The laughter was what really got to me; it told me that people can continue to smile and enjoy life’s little surprises, even with the knowledge that their time will eventually stop.

            Now I see time for what it is. The years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds that pass by are all part of the thrumming beat that we move to. I used to loathe time, as it refused to move faster. Then I learned to fear it as the world sped to a breakneck pace. But I am finally beginning to understand that I must embrace the time I have, I must move to the beat of it in my own way. Yes, time may be the master of all living and nonliving things, but it does not control our fates. We must hear the ticking of the clock and dance to its rhythm with all our hearts, for time, when it is fully embraced, is the most beautiful music.