What's the point? I consider myself to be a fairly happy person, though that might be because I know so many high-strung people. All I do is just relax and take things for how they are. You can call this being satisfied with mediocrity, but you can also take it for always having lemonade and not lemons. Plus all that stress kills, literally. You don't need meditation or yoga or therapy (usually) to be a happy person. I'm saying "happy" because I wouldn't normally be characterized with the word "calm." Energetic, perhaps?
People stress over what they want too much. Goals are great to have, but I've always viewed them in a different light. On the varsity swim team, my coach would always tell us not to have a goal time to achieve, because it could set us back. It's just the wrong way to look at things -- you should be focused more on how to get better, rather than what to get better at. Sometimes, we get so stuck on our goals that anything below it crushes our confidence and sets us back emotionally, which is no good at all.
At this point, talking about college applications is simply unavoidable. Earlier this school year when I was sending out my 1298722394 applications, spending approximately $394872349712948712312, I had my heart set on Yale University (that part wasn't a joke... awkward). As unrealistic as it may seem now, I really thought I would give it a shot, and I spent so much time and energy doing interviews, writing essays, and just meeting with people. The whole time, I told myself in the back of my mind that I could not get emotionally attached to the idea of going to this crazy-hard-to-get-into school because of the huge chance that I wouldn't get in. Unfortunately, I'm only human, so I didn't follow my own advice and was pretty heartbroken when I got my rejection letter, even if I was expecting it.
After a lot of stress and demoralization with a stack of rejection letters piling up to remind me how much I should've studied in the past four years, I was accepted at Fordham University. At first, all I could see were lemons -- I had seen the city campus once and hated it because I absolutely need to be on an actual campus with some kind of grass or tree in sight. Turns out that what I had seen was Lincoln Center, but I'm going to Rose Hill which is GORGEOUS, and as I looked at the school more and more, I could definitely see how this could make great lemonade (terribly cliche metaphor I'm so sorry). I'm going to the Big Apple next year! *squeals* Honestly, at this point, Fordham looks like it's going to be way more fun and filled with opportunity than if I had gone to any of the other schools at which I was either rejected or accepted, and I could not be more happy about where I'm going next fall. Pretty much the only thing I'm worried about is my sense of direction. The second I'm outside the campus, I will either have my nose stuck in my GPS app or my arms clinging for dear life to a friend.
Am I settling for something less than I wanted, or am I just living in the moment and not worrying about the opportunities I might have had? Being an optimist, I tend to lean toward the second option, and though it's not like I have no regrets in life, I like to think that only caring about what's certain and beneficial to your emotional, spiritual self can make life so much more stress-free and prevent the past from haunting or nagging at the present. To those out there who feel like they're stuck in the past or feel too stressed about what they could've had but didn't get: take a deep breath. Or twenty. To continue with my lemonade theme here, Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) said, "If life gives you lemons, don't settle for simply making lemonade -- make a glorious scene at a lemonade stand."
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