Life’s questions prompt deep personal reflection, encourage living in the “now”

What kind of time do you have to have for it to qualify as the “time of your life?”

I mean, we are always hearing about it. “Man, college is going to be the time of your life!” Or “Let me tell you, when I was working my first job, it was the time of my life!” Or “I can’t wait for you to study abroad; I guarantee you are going to have the time of your life.”

What does that mean? Is it when you are afforded a unique sense of independence? A time void of responsibility and full of new opportunity? Does it play in the same league as love or the flu—the league of things you can’t fully understand until you experience them? Or is it something only Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes will ever know? I have been asking myself these questions for about two months and expect I will keep asking them until I am on the plane home. Am I having the time of my life? I don’t know.

When I first got settled in Ireland, I felt this sense of immediacy, like I had to find a way to fill up 16 hours a day, every day, until I came home. After about two weeks, I was tired. I was spending way too much money and I began to think about this sense of immediacy and tried to figure out the cause of it. And while I still am pondering, I think it is the fault of constantly hearing about “the time of my life.” It just feels so finite. It feels like I am eventually going to reach a point where the “time of my life” will come to end, and I will spend the rest of my days looking back on it and comparing it to everything else I do. And, by definition, no other time will be better.

But you know what? I think that is some utter bologna, excuse my language. The time of your life should not be one chapter of it, but the whole thing. If you spend all your energy on maxing out the experience of only one moment in your life for fear that after the moment is over, it’ll all go downhill, then I think you’ll end up tired and empty. Now, I don’t mean to say looking forward to something or having a fantastic experience is bad. We should all try to make the best of our situation and live our best lives while we can. But I invite you to consider if you are living to have one “time of your life,” or are you living to make the most of your time alive?

With all that being said, I am going to grab my guitar, find a nice tree to sit in, pick some tunes and enjoy myself. Go find your guitar and your tree and do what makes you happy today. Tomorrow is an issue for tomorrow.