I recently had a run-in with the campus flu and found myself holed up in my room, stuck in bed for a day or two. Instead of using this time as an opportunity to catch up on extra homework, or get a few more hours of sleep, I decided it was time for a great British movie marathon.
My list consisted of a rewatch of “Pride and Prejudice”, “One Day”, “Trainspotting” and the 2013 film “About Time”, which I had started years ago, but never got the chance to finish.
I had heard many good things about the film, with some people deeming it, “life changing.” I had just celebrated my birthday the weekend prior, so I was in the mood for the sappy kind of life-altering, “words to live by,” monologue that “About Time” was promising me.
The movie follows a young man named Tim, who just learned from his father that the men in his family gain the ability to travel through time once they turn 21. Of course, in typical time travel movie fashion, Tim uses it to go back and right his mistakes, or sometimes someone else’s, and makes some more time changing mix-ups in the process.
He finds love, experiences loss, and learns that one small misstep could alter everything, or that some things are just meant to be no matter how hard we try to change it. Eventually, however, Tim comes to this conclusion, which he deemed his key to happiness: “Just try to live every day as if you’ve deliberately come back to that one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of your extraordinary, ordinary life.”
Did I think it was the best movie I’ve ever seen? No, but did it make me feel a little sentimental about my life and everything I’ve experienced up until now? Yeah I’d say so. It has me sitting here reflecting on time and growing up, so I think it accomplished what it set out to do.
As I mentioned before, I recently celebrated my 19th birthday. And as most people who think far too much about themselves and their place in the world, I had been feeling a sort of impending dread leading up to the day.
Yes, its exciting to celebrate with friends, and I am still way too young to be worrying about getting too old, but I just loved being 18 too much to let it go without getting a little upset about it.
I had so many exciting things happen during that period of my life; I moved away from home and started college, met new friends, started writing more, got a car, had my first internship. Overall, I started to really find out who I was and what I wanted at 18, so I wasn’t ready to move on from it.
But when I sat back a thought about it, every birthday I always seem to look back on my year and think, “wow, that was so great! I wish I could have stayed that age forever.”
So, here is my conclusion that I came to: If I always seem to end up thinking that my life has been so great thus far, I really have nothing to fear. I already know that when I look back on being 19 in a year from now, I’ll be met with the same feeling of fondness I’ve always felt for the past years of my life. So here’s to a new year of living every day as if, “it were the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”