Carpe Diem

What gives value to a life? What will those after me think of my days spent on Earth? Did I make my life worthwhile? These questions are very subjective, but there are main ideas that are universal. As depicted in Gilgamesh, love is the only thing that is eternal. Since we cannot live forever, how do we make the most of the days we have? Many abide by the philosophy of treating each day as if it were their last trying to treasure every moment, but in reality everyone falls into the trap of taking life for granted. When your time is up will you look back on a life of wasted days or accomplishments and legacy? I hope to have the ladder. In my eighteen years of life, preparing myself for adulthood, I have put as much effort into being thankful for my life and ‘doing something’ with it. Before my lift ends I hope to experience and accomplish many things.

My mother always told me while I was growing up was that I was ‘special’ and talented. In my lifetime I want to do my best to explore the talents that I have been blessed with. In addition I want to challenge myself to do things that are not innately easy for me. I am not much of a runner, I do spring and summer jogs around my neighborhood and that is about the extent of my experience, but before I die I want to run a marathon. This sounds silly since I am not much of a runner, but I try not to limit myself to any one thing. I was a dancer from kindergarten through junior high. Being a ballerina was no easy task and I was by no means born with perfect turn-out or perfect arches, but I used my natural strengths to progress and improve. However, when I realized that my reasons for dancing had shifted from a fun and gratifying activity to more of a job I knew it was time to move forward and find something to make me happy. I taped into my inner jock and decided that I would give volleyball a try. Much to my surprise I really enjoyed the sport and continued on to play in high school. Had I not challenged myself and stepped out of my comfort zone (and believe me it is big when a ballerina trades in her tutu for sneakers) I would have never changed and been dancing unhappily. This, I hope, will continue on for the rest of my life. My past experience seems juvenile, but not much else could be expected at a young age. As I mature I hope never to limit myself and always explore my talents. Not only is this important for me as a person, to constantly grow and search within myself, but it is also important for humanity. Too often I hear stories about adults who are miserable in their jobs. Perhaps they never explored other options or accessed their talents. I am aware that there are various factors which go into a man being unhappy in his job, but with baby steps we can make a change. Expanding your activities, not limiting yourself to the bubble created up until this point in life that will bring peace and a greater self understanding. This I feel is much better than going through life never knowing what you could have been.

Not only do I want to explore the things I have been blessed with, but I also want to seize every opportunity to learn. The learning I want to do goes beyond the classroom. Yes, I do want to go to college and expand my education as much as I am able in my life, but I want to learn out in the world, in real situations. Part of this knowledge will come from travel. I think it is very important to realize that there is a world outside of our tiny rich New England state. This is not to say that I do not love Connecticut, but I hope never to be naïve to other nations. I want to meet the people of these other countries, to interact with them in their environment and experience their culture, not just read about it. I love to learn about other cultures since my culture is such a large part of my life. Nothing makes me appreciate and understand my heritage more than learning and respecting others. I am lucky to have such opportunities for education. My father would never have been allowed to look at colleges outside of CT and here I am with long lists of various schools scattered throughout New England. I will not take this for granted. I want to put to use what I learn in school and the respect I have for other cultures that my parents teach me. This is largely important for humanity since the only way to avoid ignorance is to educate. Far less judgment and hate would occur between nations if they really understood each others culture and beliefs. This is not necessarily a perfect fix for all national problems, but rather a way to create a more understanding world. How can we judge other nations without knowing anything about their culture? We cannot expect them to understand our ideas if we do not take the time to fully understand theirs.

The typical pageant queen when asked what the most important thing we need will respond “world peace.” I am not trying to offend these women, but rather take this idea and apply it to my life. I want to achieve personal peace. I hope to become happy with the person I am at peace with myself. This also goes into my relationships as I hope to stay away from unnecessary grudges and fights. As I mentioned before life is short and I do not want to spend my life ignoring people I love because of petty things. I am very self critical and with maturity I hope that fades significantly. I want to push myself for success, but also to acknowledge my successes and realize that what I have done is enough. Peace is easy to say, but almost impossible to feel; at least for me and for more than a day. I have momentary peaceful times, days of personal satisfaction, but the feeling eventually fades away. More often than not I am judging myself. With maturation and time I hope to be able to experience inner peace thus allowing me to enjoy my days on earth however many they may be. All people should abide by this philosophy. It dramatically reduces tension; you cannot love others until you love yourself, and you cannot love yourself until you are at peace. We must internally accept our situation in order to deal with situations involving others. Not only that, but also a greater sense of calm would come about the world since we would not need to do as much for self gratification and praise. Rewards from others are nice, but self recognition is most gratifying.

I want to pay tribute to all the people who have helped me in my life. I plan to carry out the tradition and help people myself. I want to influence lives and I am not so concerned with the quantity of people I can help, but rather the impact I make. If I die knowing that I have helped one person, that I used my knowledge and experience to bring support to someone who struggled, then I will die happy. This is a large portion of what I put value on in life. The previous things I mentioned are stepping stones to this idea of helping people. This is also valuable to humanity. Helping others is a key piece to a successful environment. How can we grow if we do not have someone to help along the way and examples to learn from? There is always someone worse off. Regardless of how bad you may think your life is just remember that people are suffering far worse than you could ever imagine and revert your attention to doing what you can to aid them rather than sulking in your self pity.

“All you need is love. (The Beatles) Love makes the world go ‘round. (Ashlee Simpson) The greatest thing you ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” (Moulin Rouge) As you can see, love has been established as something very important in our world. We hear about it in songs and see it on the silver screen. I want to experience true love; to allow myself to love another person and to be loved back. Another aspect of love I want is to feel a mother’s love, from the point of view of a mother, I want to have children. My mom always tells me wonderfully sentimental stories about how magical it was when she had me, and how much she loved me from the moment I was born, but I want to experience that first hand. As I mature and gain more life experience I hope that my ability to love purely grows stronger. True love is most important, only love is eternal, thus for all humanity true love is something to strive for. We live on in the hearts of those we love; we leave a piece of ourselves with them. If no one loved in the world there would be chaos; love brings support, it anchors us establishes family and roots. From love we gain stability and a feeling of safeness and trust which are vital to surviving especially if you want to be happy.

Judging the value of a life is unique to each person. I believe a person who lives each day fully has lived a valuable life. He or she may spend their days working in a factory or teaching, but what matters is not what he or she is doing, but how he or she does it. So long as there is compassion and respect for their time and for those who they interact with what they do does not matter. A person must value his life in order to make it valuable. The key aspect is not to waste time or ‘wish your days away.’ I have a tendency during times of hardship to focus my mind on the days to come and ‘once it’s over’ how much better things will be. All I really do during this time is waste my days; I have wished them away. Nothing is worse then wasting days when you think of all the people who have passed away and no longer have that opportunity. It is cliché but true that we should live each days as if it were our last that way we do not waste precious moments. A valuable life is lived by someone who values and appreciates life. This person takes the time to look beyond her borders and to see the world as a whole and understand his importance in it.