Don't Worry, Be Happy!

Here at BYU, there is a pretty cool website--http://theboard.byu.edu. Here you can ask anonymous questions, and a team of highly trained volunteers respond, usually in exactly 100 hours. I'll admit I've asked them a few things in my day, and I am always pleased with their answers. Every once in a while, I think about applying to become a Board writer, but then I'm not sure that I'd ever have the time! We'll see what happens.

Anyways, sometimes when I need a break in the grad lab, I go on the website and hit the "I'm board" button and just read through random questions pulled up from the past. ... Haha, come to think of it, that's not how I found the question I'm about to quote. It was posted yesterday, and so I read it in my daily board readings... But anyway, you can find it here: http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/61696/ The question is interesting, but irrevelent to the point I want to make. One line in the response particularly stood out to me: "In my experience it doesn't do much good to dream about how things could be. It's better instead to focus on how good things are."

This line really resonated with me. I am a dreamer by nature, which comes in handy sometimes, like when I am trying to finish that novel I started when I was 12. :) But other times, it can be a bad thing. It is too easy to dream about how my life will be someday when things are better. When my sister is healthy again, when I finally find a boyfriend, when I get married, whatever. Sometimes I get so caught up in dreaming of how things might be that I forget to look around and enjoy the life I am living now! This is a habit I need to overcome. No matter what stage I reach in life, there will always be something more than I need to accomplish, some other goal that I yearn after. That's fine, but I need to learn NOW to be happy in the moment. If I'm always waiting for X or Y to happen so I can be happy, I will always be waiting... not happy.

So, new goal. I need to stop and smell the roses. I'm living in what some people call the best years of my life. While I'm not sure that's true exactly, it IS true that I have a lot of unique opportunities right now that I won't have again. I need to relax and enjoy 'em! You're only young once!