You know those few precious moments that you have to yourself during the course of life’s exhausting rat race? When you’re not busy studying, agonizing over getting ahead, or stressing over the little annoyances that you can neither change nor forget? These are the moments that can make or break you—they can either be moments that give you the opportunity to dig yourself further and further into that hole that is the daily grind, or they can be the moments that lift you up, that inspire you, that relax you, and that help you find yourself. Those short periods of time between tasks that most of us don’t pay enough attention to are full of potential—choosing how you engage with them and deciding to appreciate them can make all the difference to your day.
Too often, the moment we have a little break, we grab our phones and open Instagram, Facebook, or whatever other social media site that gives us our daily dose of social interaction. We sit there scrolling through picture after picture of posed prettiness and carefully staged artistry; we lose ourselves in the façade of the image, find ourselves pulled into the need to update our stories and let the world know what we’re up to, or find ways to join the frenzy. Living through social media has become so normalized in society to the point that it is all we can think of doing anymore—and sometimes, this leaves us feeling more tired and stressed than before. Not that social media doesn’t have its benefits—memes, connections, and current information are a few of its considerable perks, but we tend to forget that there are other ways to spend our time and get into a different headspace from the workaholic, busy bee default.
Think about it—how many activities have you lost track of, and what passions have you let slide because of all those late-night study sessions and trips to the library? What do you miss the most, what are the memories that you have of you being happy and at peace? Here are a few possibilities:
- The feeling of having just experienced something profound and indescribable at the end of a really, really good movie.
- That sense of contentment that hits you when your favourite crime writer finally reveals who the killer is after a hundred plot twists.
- That floaty, at-peace-with-the-world feeling that comes with listening, really listening, to one of your favourite songs—the feeling that life can’t really be all that bad.
- The joy that comes with chilling with your friends, talking about everything and nothing at all, laughing hysterically and reveling in the chance to just be.
- The sensation of the wind in your hair, the sand on your feet, and the sound of the waves in your ears at the beach, the sense of vastness, of solitude, of perfection.
- That peculiar out-of-body experience that comes with stargazing, staring up at the mass of twinkling lights above you and feeling part of everything that ever was and that ever will be.
- The good vibes that come with sitting by a pool, lazily swirling your feet in the water and sipping a cold drink.
- The good kind of exhaustion that tingles even in your fingertips after a good run or a pumped-up workout.
- The satisfaction you feel as you ice the cake you just baked, or when you lay the meal you cooked on the table.
- The freeing sense of being at one with the world when you take a slow walk through a park, listening to the wind rustling through the leaves of age-old trees.
And on it goes, and on.
Each of us has a list of things that really make us aware of how amazing it is to just stop, breathe, and live in the moment. Unfortunately, today’s competitive, risky world makes it harder and harder for each of us to find contentment in the ways that we would like to—that is why it is so important to grab those random pockets of time in your day and make the most of them. Make time to keep doing the things you love, even if it means giving up some of your study time. Creating your own peace using the resources you have is the best; it’s a wonderful method of preventing the world from crushing you, and making sure that you are in tune with yourself.