You never know the importance of a moment, until it is a memory. Moments in our lives slowly slip away from us. It feels like 10 years ago was yesterday and all of a sudden we are starting our lives, and staring into the eyes of time. 

I want to do everything, be everything, and see everything. I want to be able to experience every wonder of the world and live my life so long and full, but I don’t have forever. Forever is such a weird word. It means well, forever, a long time, for the rest of eternity, but, our forever is most likely only 70 to 80 years. That is simply terrifying. 

I cannot tell you how many times I have looked back and realized how much time I took for granted and I am only 18 years old. I regret not spending time with family and friends before our time was up. I regret not realizing that time is short before, and we only get one life. I spent so much time alone or being selfish instead of considering what really mattered. 

I look back now and realize how much time I wasted. Graduation is staring me in the face and it feels like just the other day I was starting my first day of pre-school. It is crazy how fast time goes by, right under our noses, where we don’t pick up on it until later. I feel like I blinked once, and I was a senior. 

Some people would say that I am young and I have so much time to live my life. I am young and I do still have the opportunity to live my life. But no matter what, our life here is short. The time with the people we live with is short. Everything we touch and do will one day not exist, and that is how it is supposed to be. It just is overwhelmingly scary to never know how short our time is here. Therefore, we have to spend that time well because we don’t know what comes after this.

We do not have enough time with our loved ones. I had 16 years with my papa. I had 16 whole years, and it still will never be enough. I didn’t have enough time to thank him or talk to him one more time. I didn’t have enough time to hug him or have one last tea party in his living room with him. The 16 years I had, turned into memories. 

We do not have enough time for ourselves. I want to be so many different things, I want to live so many lives, and experience so much. I want to have a job that I can have kids and a husband, animals, and be home for dinner at night, and take the kids to school in the mornings. But then the other part of me wants to have no kids, no husband, and just be committed to my work. But in the end, I will have to make the choice. I do not have enough time in this life to live it all or to have it all. I cannot even see or do everything I want in this lifetime. I want to travel to these amazing places all over the world and be all these different people, but that is not realistic. 

Some people would say that you should just live your life to the fullest from the beginning. While yes that is true, it is not easy to do so. So many things come into conflict with living the perfect life and spending your time wisely. I am grateful to be able to have the opportunity to be able to make my own money, but it sure has taken away from my time with my peers and family greatly. I spend most of my time here, but that is not something that I can help with. 

But I have learned that life is too short to care what the mean girl in your high school cares about you. Life is too short to not be confident in your body. Life’s too short to not choose yourself. Life is too short to hold onto grudges and to hold onto toxic people who hurt you. Life is too short to not fall in love, make mistakes, and dance in your pajamas. 

I do not want to be one of those people who looks back and regrets my life. So my best advice to you? Hug your grandparents (and tight too), drop the attitude with your mom, don’t try to grow up so fast, fall in love, travel, make mistakes, and live, while we all can, while we still have the chance. We only get this life, this one single life, so why not value the short time we have and live in the moment considering there will never be enough time. 

Shonda Rhimes once said, “You never know the biggest day of your life is your biggest day, not until it’s happening. You don’t recognize the biggest day of your life, not until you’re right in the middle of it. The day you commit to something or someone. The day you get your heartbroken. The day you meet your soul mate. The day you realize there’s not enough time because you wanna live forever. Those are the biggest days. The perfect days.”