If you
have been around enough people, someone has undoubtedly said to you, “Enjoy
High School – it’s the best years of your life”. More than likely, you followed that up with
some seriously negative thoughts about that person’s sanity. For many people, High School seems to be a
really crappy time of life, not one they would likely remember with great
fondness.
High
School is fraught with all sorts of forgettable experiences – homework,
heartbreak, bullies, growing pains, stupid mistakes, stupid comments, perhaps
sibling rivalry… no wonder so many people would like to forget it. What I will tell you is: You will not
forget it, and you should not.
High School is not the best time of your life or the worst, it’s
just a time.
Sometime
later on, you will look back on this time of your life and compare it to the others. Hopefully, there will be many times for you
to compare to, though statistically some of you will have far fewer. Time gives us a wonderful ability to look
back, not in anger or nostalgia but in perspective. No matter how pleasant or difficult these
current times are to you, they will look very different when they are far in
your rear-view mirror. The good will
taste sweeter and the bitter will generally fade away. This is why so many adults think back on High
School as such a great time of life.
They have forgotten all about the hassles, because that stuff was so
very unimportant. What they remember are
the good parts: friends, good teachers, big events, romantic experiences, silliness,
etc.
What you will see when you
look back are the parts of High School that made you who you are. Some of those parts may help form you into
the person you always wanted to be, but others may have actually prevented you from
getting where you wanted to go.
Ironically, you will cherish both the good and the bad equally, because
you would not be who you are without all of it.
Hardly a day goes by that I do not think of some key event that shaped
the current life I live. I can imagine
alternatives had I taken different classes, attended a different college, or
married a different girl, but any of those things would have changed the life I
live now, and I’m pretty well satisfied with what I have. Sure, there are things I wish I hadn’t done
or things I wish I had, but then I would be a different person, and there is no
guarantee that that would be better.
The way I see it, if you look back
much later and still think of High School as the best years of your life, it
would be a pretty sad commentary on the quality of the other times of your
life. Live this time well; learn from
it, evaluate it sensibly, and move on to other times. Cherish what you are gaining now (even if the
lessons are painful) and then move on to other times with the same
attitude. You’ll find that whatever time
you are in will be the best time of your life.