For centuries this question has attracted the attention of philosophers and for the last 21 years, it has caused me a lot of anxiety.
I used to ponder little things about my life and the direction it was going.
I would wonder if I was wasting my life away flipping hamburgers or if I was somehow missing out on the “real world” because I enjoyed playing video games.
Then one day – it hit me. It hit me harder than anything has ever hit me before in my life and suddenly I saw things very clearly.
The point of life is… not to worry about the point of life, but rather to live and experience the lives that we are given. That means to laugh, to cry, to learn and experience everything that makes us uniquely human.
After this epiphany, I started to apply this philosophy to my everyday life, including my classes at Sinclair Community College.
Before this revelation, I always asked why I had to take all of these worthless math classes when I was never going to use any of it?
But, after this revelation I embraced my math classes. They still frustrated me, but because I wasn’t fighting them anymore, I could actually see how they were helping me. I thought the math classes taught me discipline, how to think in different ways and how not giving up on things that are initially hard to us makes us stronger people in the long run.
I went from a kid who couldn’t stand school to a young man that embraced his education.
I loved learning about Tectonic Plates in Anne Henry’s Geology class and I felt empowered after learning how to deliver a persuasive speech in John Ulrich’s Public Speaking course.
So what I would like everyone to try to do this quarter is embrace your classes and not just treat them as something you have to do to get a piece of paper, but realize that they are helping to make us better people.
We have to sit in those classes anyway, so why not try to learn what the professors are offering us? If nothing else, it will make the time go by quicker.
Remember that we don’t have yesterday and we don’t have tomorrow. All we have is now.