Sitting at my school’s convocation the other day, I was listening to one of the important people leading the assembly go on about how we will remember this day for the rest of our lives. Big statement, honestly.
Sitting there in the crowd, I started to get a bit nervous. Suddenly, I was under the impression that this had to be the perfect day. Was I dressed properly? Did I do everything I needed to to prepare? Was I in the right headspace? Was I going to take all of the right pictures to capture the most meaningful moments to look back on in 4 years?
But I soon realized that there was no way I’d enjoy the ceremony with this mindset. I could talk it up to a high-stakes event… or, I could just let it happen and become another experience.
Recently, there has been a lot of new beginnings. With this, there has also been many events and people and memories that may or may not hold a lot of significance in the future. And at least for me, I’ve realized that adding on expectations never makes anything better. In fact, the opposite usually happens.
So I’ve started to think in this way that everything is what you make it.
If you would like something to be a huge deal, and that is what excites you and makes you happy, then by all means! Find joy in the small things, the big things, and everything in between, as long as that is where you’d like to find it.
On the contrary, if you would rather not make a huge deal of a certain event or experience even though it’s one that is typically highly celebrated, then that is okay, too.
You can create some of the most meaningful moments with events that, to the outside eye, have absolutely no meaning at all. And on the other side of the spectrum, you don’t need to make anything up to be more than you feel like it is just because society says so.
Your wedding day doesn’t need to be the single most important day of your life. But, it certainly could be. Your college years do not need to be the best four years of your life. But again, they could be.
For me, focusing on the experience has suddenly relaxed much of the pressure I had been feeling to make any given moment “special.” And I’ve realized that, in reality, the most special moments are almost always the ones that weren’t planned.
With this in mind, I have found a lot of peace with the path that I am walking; picking up flowers as I go, knowing that I can make them into the most beautiful bouquet in the world or throw them in the air and let them fall behind me and never look back. And to me, that is something truly special.
Love,
Leah
leave a comment!