Being the tangled ball of anxiety I am, I constantly fear the end of all good things. Whenever I’m having a fun time at school, I quickly start realizing how soon my high school life will end. Or whenever I’m talking to my family, I start picturing how they’ll all eventually pass away, and how I have such a limited time with them. The time spent having fun is quickly wasted into time spent worrying instead.

Becoming a victim of time is something we’ve all experienced at one point. We often think about the end of something before it even comes. “Even though school hasn’t even ended its first semester, I still think about how much I dread graduating and going to college,” senior Candace Chen admitted. Because of this fear, we lose ourselves to our future and waste our present.

Facing the end of things or saying goodbye is just difficult in general. For example, I remember forcing myself to slowly read books I loved so I wouldn’t ever finish it. This goal, being extremely unrealistic, is an example of us humans and our fear of the end. It’ll come any day, whether we like it or not. Accepting this is not easy, of course. When I was younger, I wished that I could invent a machine that erases our memory of a book, so we could read it over and over again with the same excitement. That’s why it always feels bittersweet after finishing a really good book. It feels sour because it felt like it went by too quickly, but sweet because it was still a good experience.

After years of maturing, I realize that this book is similar to life. Yes, there’s an end. But why imagine the end when we’re there to read it in the first place? I’m still struggling to accept the fact that time won’t comply with my demands. Everything I’m enjoying now will pass by in a without a doubt. That’s something out of my control, but there is still one thing that is. I can control whether I spend the time that goes by the best I can, instead of using it to just worry. Sometimes we should just breathe and live in the moment.