Shouldn’t this feel…more?
This was the recurring question in my head at my high school graduation. 18 years of our lives had led up to this ceremony. My best friends and I were about to scatter, and I was going on my last big family vacation right after. College would be too-many-states-to-count away. (In a place with snow, no less!) Of course, as it often did and has, reality unfolded into a calmer picture that June. We took pictures with our families, waved our friends over, and mutually extended good wishes for the future. As years passed, new people entered our lives, we happened upon new places, and for the unlucky many, dear friends departed. There were dramatic moments, but mostly everything crackled instead of boomed.
For a while I craved “cinematic highs” in my life (make no mistake, I have drama queen desires), but not every scene in life can be a thrilling victory or a flash of romance. This realization has been a sobering part of growing up for me. Most of life is made up of B-roll after all. It’s the training montage, the couple watching TV on the couch, the action hero in his daily disguise.
So I’ll find my hit elsewhere. For hours I’ll jump down the YouTube rabbit holes of soldiers coming home, sweet engagement proposals, incredible sports victories, and Oscar acceptance speeches. I don’t know what it is, what hormone is released that keeps me hitting the next video button, but I can’t get enough. I live vicariously through McKayla Maroney’s perfect vault in London or Lupita Nyong’o’s beautiful speech holding her golden statue. When I finally stop and realize I had things to do, I feel ashamed.
Instead of living my life, I had been dissatisfied with its plainness and rejected it for easily consumable excitement. I let myself go on autopilot when I could’ve been working to make my dreams come true, too.
I like to think that I’m a person of great focus and self-discipline. But while visualizing my end goal, I lose sight of the gratitude I should feel for the present. This phenomenon has been worded in other ways. People say that if you believe you’ll be really happy once X, you won’t ever actually be happy at all. In retrospect, this is how I thought about my high school graduation. The four years were at times so arduous, physically, emotionally, and mentally, that I couldn’t wait until I had my diploma and college acceptance in hand. That for all that hard work, walking across the stage should’ve made me bowl over with emotion. I should’ve been weeping, hugging everyone, promising we’d never lose touch. Hey, people have wished for sillier things.
What about graduating from college? Interestingly enough, I placed fewer emotional expectations on that occasion. Perhaps because I hadn’t bonded with as many members of my class or as closely as I was to my high school mates, some of whom I’d known for more than four years. Perhaps because the amount of social media outlets has increased so much since high school that we can all post B-roll of our lives, leaving it for anyone who cares enough to watch.
I’m still guilty of skipping through to the “good part” of songs. However, I am learning to appreciate the gradual crescendos that reach that point. I understand now that the bars in between deserve my equal undivided attention. All the little parts make up a magnificent whole, just like our lifetimes on this planet