This week I received a piece of advice that I am never likely to forget. She looked me in the eyes and said something no-one else ever has:
“It seems to me that you spend far too much of your time doing, maybe life is actually about being.”
Which made me think; what are the memories that are going to stick with me? It’s certainly not going to be my GPA or whether I score an excellent internship. The things that I’m going to remember aren’t the same ones that appear on my resume.
It’s going to be different things entirely that I hold onto:
Lying in a bed of hundreds of balloons giggling with Jade on his 21st birthday.
Singing Ke$ha’s “Dinosaur” with my little sister in the car, laughing at how stupid the lyrics are.
The time that mum started laughing in the cinema and couldn’t stop. The three of us clutching our stomachs, tears running down our cheeks while the people around us tittered in annoyance.
It’s the book that I can’t put down. The song that captures exactly how I’m feeling. The movie that has me sobbing openly.
Life isn’t suppose to be serious. Somehow I’ve lost my grasp on that. I’ve been so busy trying to find myself, that I’ve forgotten to look in the most obvious place.
But I’m starting to remember now; I’m the girl who laughs at everyone’s jokes. The girl who stood in the sun for 11 hours because she believes in something. The girl who loves to be kissed on the forehead. The girl who bought a Jacob Black shirt and proudly wears it to bed. The girl who tells everyone with a serious look that she has a crush on Kevin Rudd. I’m the girl who wears the same pair of earrings to Brisbane everyday because the person who gave them to her is so important that they make her feel safe.
Perhaps I never lost myself. Perhaps what I lost was perspective.
“It seems to me that you spend far too much of your time doing, maybe life is actually about being.”
Which made me think; what are the memories that are going to stick with me? It’s certainly not going to be my GPA or whether I score an excellent internship. The things that I’m going to remember aren’t the same ones that appear on my resume.
It’s going to be different things entirely that I hold onto:
Lying in a bed of hundreds of balloons giggling with Jade on his 21st birthday.
Singing Ke$ha’s “Dinosaur” with my little sister in the car, laughing at how stupid the lyrics are.
The time that mum started laughing in the cinema and couldn’t stop. The three of us clutching our stomachs, tears running down our cheeks while the people around us tittered in annoyance.
It’s the book that I can’t put down. The song that captures exactly how I’m feeling. The movie that has me sobbing openly.
Life isn’t suppose to be serious. Somehow I’ve lost my grasp on that. I’ve been so busy trying to find myself, that I’ve forgotten to look in the most obvious place.
But I’m starting to remember now; I’m the girl who laughs at everyone’s jokes. The girl who stood in the sun for 11 hours because she believes in something. The girl who loves to be kissed on the forehead. The girl who bought a Jacob Black shirt and proudly wears it to bed. The girl who tells everyone with a serious look that she has a crush on Kevin Rudd. I’m the girl who wears the same pair of earrings to Brisbane everyday because the person who gave them to her is so important that they make her feel safe.
Perhaps I never lost myself. Perhaps what I lost was perspective.
