Life is hard.
It’s beautiful, and complex, and infinitely changing, and stuffed full of amazing things that often seem to defy imagination. There are moments in our lives that are so unbelievable, they make me say, “You can’t write that!” Real life is sometimes more serendipitous, more arbitrary, more poetic, than the plotlines and poems that we create.
But life is also incredibly difficult. It’s stressful. And, it’s overwhelming. For every moment of heart-stopping beauty, there is another instant of anxiety or grief or frustration. It’s easier to let those hard times pile up behind your eyes, to let them block the beauty in that patch of blue sky on a cloudy day or the genuine laugh coming from the lunch table next to yours. Getting rid of that accumulation of small frustrations and disappointments is a lot like removing those cobwebs in your ceiling corners: they’re just high enough out of reach that it doesn’t always seem like it’s worth the effort. So they blur the corners, reminding you that not everything is one hundred percent beautiful, that something will always be a little wrong.
I’ve struggled with cobwebs for most of my life. These cobwebs came from various sources. They were fights with my brothers; bad performances in the multitude of sports I attempted; and those moments when I just felt completely alone in the world. My anxiety—which I’ve had since I was about six—wised me up from a pretty young age. Looking back, I was probably one of the most pessimistic third graders in Riverside Elementary School’s history. It wasn’t an outward attitude, but I look back on those days, which should have been carefree and full of laughter, and remember a lot of hand-wringing and overanalyzing and getting stuck in those cobwebs.
However, through a lot of thinking, a few therapists, an incredible family, and a few other changes, I’ve become a dogged optimist. Dogged in the sense that I know that things go wrong, but I still believe it will end up okay. How else do we keep moving, otherwise? In high school, I came out of my shell and developed this overwhelming excitement to be living life, to have time pass and watch life lessons sprout from unlikely places and cut my hair for people with cancer. A lot of people become disillusioned with life as they grow older. I had a different experience: I fell in love with life, for all of its imperfections.
My arrival at college rattled that carefree happiness. I think many college students would agree. For the first time, we are managing our daily lives almost entirely on our own. There are responsibilities, exams, deadlines, due dates, doctor’s appointments, weekend plans, job/internship/shadow applications, and the ever-looming step out into the real world. Good cobweb fodder. Those moments of stress and frustration pile up about as quickly as homework assignments. Life seemed to run away from me again.
As a result, I’ve thought a lot about the little things.
When I was struggling the most, my mom and I would take a moment and think about things that I could look forward to. We watched Survivor together every Thursday, for example. That one helped me through the week. I looked forward to the bus ride home from school, those ten minutes of reading after finishing a test early, and playing imaginary games with my brothers. Those little things—the tiny moments of content happiness—are what kept me going.
I brought some of those little things to college with me. Survivor, for example. It has moved to Wednesdays, and I now take that hour to close my books, sit down, and yell at the television for a while with a few close friends. Fluffernutter Fridays are another example. For those of you who have not had your taste buds blessed by the magnificence of a fluffernutter: this is a sandwich made with peanut butter (creamy is best) and marshmallow fluff (spreadable marshmallow… yep). My mom used to make them for me when I was at home, so I’ve brought the tradition to college.
Every Friday, I carry this pretty huge tub of fluff into the dining hall and make myself a fluffernutter. A few of my teammates occasionally come up with their own bread and knives and ask for a scoop. And I’ve never said no. How could I deny them such a perfect little thing?
Those little things—be it weekly routines, an hour spent sitting in the sun, or receiving (or giving) a genuine compliment—are what get me through the day. They are the footholds my dogged optimism searches for on its trek through this difficult life. They are the things that create and fulfill dreams. They are our inspirations, our friendly reminders, and our support systems. They are what make life become a Life.
You just have to clear enough cobwebs from your eyes that you can find them.
Pro Tip: Marshmallow fluff is a fantastic method for removing those cobwebs. If you’d like some, stop by the cross country/track table in Old Side Peirce sometime between 12 and 1 on Friday afternoons.
Image Credit: Taylor Hazan