26
Sep 13

The Wonderful World of Worrying

Worry

 

I’m laying in my bed. It’s pitch black and my roommate is sleeping. It’s 1:09 am. I have to be up in 7 hours to study some more for two exams. My first college exams. I should know this stuff. It’s all multiple choice, can’t be that hard right? There’s fifty questions. That means I can miss…wait what’s 30 divided by 50…so that’s a D…no I have to get an A, but it’s the first exam, they drop the lowest grade. I’ll be okay with a B, but I really want an A, start out strong right? I have to get 40 out of 50 then, so I can miss no more than 10 questions. 1:45. I won’t even have 7 hours of sleep. It’s okay, I’ll just go to Starbucks and get coffee and study, but the lines are always so long, I’ll leave at 8:00, so then I have to get up at 7:30, which means I have less than 6 hours of sleep. 1:53. GO TO SLEEP. I don’t think I’ve ever been so wide awake in my life. Have my eyes ever been this wide…ew what’s that on the ceiling?  What’s that chanting in the distance? What…what are they saying? I wonder what they did tonight, probably not study for 4 hours like me. Ugh! I should have started studying sooner. STOP. STOP. There’s nothing you can do about it now. I’ll get what I get and do better next time right? 2:11. WHAT! GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP. Wait I can’t forget…oh no did I remember to go over the…no I need to just close my eyes and sleep, there’s nothing I can do. I could just look over those other couple of readings, no I’ll wake up my roommate. 2:57 I just need sleep. I won’t even remember everything because I studied all last minute. Why do I do this? I need to sleep. NOW.

After nearly two hours of this. The next morning I wake up and drag myself out of bed and to my exams like a zombie. I did not wake up in time for Starbucks or more studying. I wasted two hours of quality time worrying about something that was only getting worse by worrying. Not only does worrying not take away tomorrow’s struggles, it makes them worse. I have learned my lesson, I will not procrastinate, but MORE importantly I will not waste time worrying. It’s a poison.

Worrying makes worries worse by wasting time worthlessly worrying.

Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Worrying doesn’t change the outcome of anything.

A day of worrying is more exhausting than a week of work.

 


20
Sep 13

Notes on Notes of a Native Son

I was trying to find a great quote to write about this week, and I had settled on a few, but then as I was reading “Notes of a Native Son” I was deeply moved by a quote from it.

hatred

 

Hate is just too strong an emotion to be safely allowed to reside in our souls too long, it will  ruin a person, if not by the actions it causes, then by the very action of bottling it up and never letting it go. The hate itself should be thought of the as the problem, because it will not solve tensions between our enemies, it will not help us win, in fact it will blur our path to victory. Just as Baldwin’s outburst with the fearful women in the restaurant did, in some messed up score system, give a point to the whites whom were practicing such discrimination. Baldwin proved himself murderous; he proved himself savage which only fueled the racism fire.

 

If not even amidst the evil of racism is it acceptable to practice hate then it is most certainly not okay to hate in less serious of terms in our own personal lives. My aunt always said, holding on to grudges is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to suffer. A similar concept applies with hate. Hate is a weakness really, it makes you vulnerable and more susceptible to losing your cool. It’s difficult to let anger and hate go free for sure. You need to find yourself some sort of closure, and you have to do it mostly by yourself because chances are your opponent isn’t going to sit down and help you sort it out so that you can move on. They’re using your own hate against you. This is even more enraging, because it has taken a mere moment of time from the day, or it has taken the place of one single other fleeting thought that definitely had higher importance because ANYTHING else would. The hate comes from a place inside our soul where it began growing in the first place, but the means of destroying our hate comes from our own strength too.The people we hate are our opponents, but the hate itself is our nemesis.


12
Sep 13

My First Post

This is one of my absolute favorite quotes, and I think it fits snugly into this new world of college that we’re all getting used to. It’s  a quote by Walt Disney featured in the movie “Meet The Robinsons.” It goes like this: “Around here, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths..”

Walt Disney

 

The beloved Walt Disney encourages us to never stop moving forward, and believes that we don’t often look back because there is so much to be discovered in the future. This is all so important but it’s important to not just be curious but to explore that curiosity. It’s the bravery that drives us to actually pursue new things rather than be too afraid and just continue on our way, always wondering. The hardest challenge is to develop the courage and motivation to not just stand there questioning, but to actually open the strange door and walk through. College is a lot like that, especially for a freshman, because you are metaphorically standing in a large room surrounded by doors; even more, those doors lead to a whole other set of doors and those doors also have doors behind those and so on. Whether its joining a club, taking a class, trying out for a sport or team, or even just deciding that you will go and introduce yourself to one of the many people that are doors by themselves. How much can you learn from another person, how much can they change the way you think, feel or just the way you are. Maybe its a professor, an advisor or an upperclassmen who will get you connected in a professional way, and maybe that will end up being the career you have for most of your life; maybe it will be a friend who you end up having more in common than you thought possible and maybe they stand at your side at your wedding someday as you best man or maid of honor; maybe it’s a boy or a girl who is your soulmate, or maybe they’re just going to be that kid you knew once in college.

The man who served as my childhood philosopher, with his voice carrying through all the disney classics, is still teaching me his wisdom even as I am (in some ways) grown up and embracing this “wonderful world” of college. There is much to be said about curiosity but it is in his words “Keep Moving Forward” which describes the true power behind our finding ourselves wondering along new paths.

Join the club. Take the class. Go say hi. Open the door.

 

 


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