| Does anyone else feel like life has picked up in intensity lately? I'm finding that less and less things are helping me stay happy. My Laws of Life essay comes close to help convey what I'm trying to say. Please read, comment, ect. Obtaining a strong mental status is the ultimate tool to overcome almost any obstacle a high school student may encounter during those four years of his or her life. For the first time in our lives, we are being pushed to our mental and physical limits; along with trying to keep our grades high and our relationships strong, most high school students participate in time consuming activities such as band or student council. These activities consume and eliminate much of our free time, increasing our levels of stress. Some people break down and give up: They stop studying, quit extracurricular activities, and start making bad decisions like doing drugs, drinking alcohol, and participating in other illegal activities. Despite my efforts to concentrate on taking notes for my AP class, I was unable to take my mind off how stressful and busy my life was. I had been working for hours, and it was now late into the night. Recently my life had picked up in intensity. Marching band consumed four days of my week, and hockey filled the other three. Trying to balance school with band and hockey was a real challenge. My brother and I are extremely close, but things had been tense between us because he was sleep deprived from doing homework and applying to colleges. My father was working extra time because his company had fired some of his co- workers, and the work is being redistributed. My mother was always busy chaperoning my brother and I around and helping run school related events like the Taste of Norcross. Stress levels rose. However there was much to learn from this situation of discomfort. If I continued to focus on how stressful my life was becoming, I would surely arrive in a troubled state of mind. That’s when I decided to take a comical perspective. I thought to myself, “Poor little kid, with his life threatening problems of having too much homework and not enough time to relax. Maybe he should think about the people who have problems worth being upset about like not having money or friends or a healthy, stable family.” As fate would have it, one of my friends called my cell phone at that exact moment.
She was crying. She sobbed out the story of what had just taken place at her house. I struggled to understand what she was saying, but had to ask her to repeat her tale because she was beginning to become delirious. Her father had come home drunk and had abused her mother in front of her two daughters late at night. I talked to her for what seemed like eternity, attempting to comfort her. That’s when I realized that my problems were not worth crying about. She came to school the next day with a smile on her face. She showed no evidence of what had occurred the night before at her house. If she had not called me, I wouldn’t have known how torn she was inside. She carried herself with a dignified passion, as if she loved everyone and everything around her. I’ve learned that discomfort is always a necessary part of the process of enlightenment. It is depressing that one of my close friends had go to through such a horrible night for me to realize that I was overreacting. I hope that one day, I can achieve the same strong mental perspective so that no matter what happens to me, I can rise above it, and walk around with the same dignified passion. |
