Lauren+P’s+OpEd+Article

** My antique clock!

"The Simplicity of Life"** By Lauren Parrino Please take note now that this is not a negative revolt against the “horrors” of our junior year at Foothill and the dark cave of American Experience. My point is not centered on the outlines and packets, tests and DBQs, because believe it or not there is a world beyond the classroom door and the confined walls of our room, past the edge of a desk. Gasp! I know!

I miss the simple life! There it is, quick to the point. Simple. The weight of the world has been flung onto our shoulders’ and why should it? Why should we be thinking about where we’ll be sitting in ten years? Behind the desk as a CEO? The register at Vons? From the time we have entered high school (excluding the first day because all we can think about is finding our friends so we don’t look like loaners) we have become so intent on achieving a remarkable GPA.

Where are those moments? Where you fall asleep lying in the sun, acoustic music in the background, an open book in one hand and a melted strawberry banana smoothie in the other? Maybe walking from one end of the beach to the other before the sun rises? And, Geib, please don’t say “Boom! No! That happens in the summertime! That’s for vacation days! For now, massage your brain and get ready to cram! Cram, cram, cram!”-- or something of that variation. I didn’t know that our lives and youth were confined to a few months of the year. If so (and it’s not!) my optimism just dropped a few points. Besides, this mostly doesn’t even happen in the summertime because our minds are still flashing forward to college and careers, particularly the summer following junior year. Read this [|article] on Yahoo! News, for once they actually produced an article of some useful quality. Except for maybe the glass of wine and a few others, these items and events, so small and simple, have vanished completely. They are not complex, so why aren’t we able to enjoy them as we once had? It's because the weight of our future is already here, hanging in front of us like a dark nightmare on a dangling string seemingly ready to snap, only this one is bound to come true and each of our decisions determine the outcome. Naturally, these decisions won’t be swinging on a swing set, flying a kite, being with family or hiking on a rough trail. How about sitting on the lawn with your fetch-crazy dog or enjoying the splash of raindrops on your face and arms? These moments, what I call the "simple things" or the "fun times" in life are calming and are the only thing that wipe out our convulsing brains to utterly tranquil moments. Life has become too complicated and society has decided the "fun times" aren't important enough to deserve an hour on the clock. There are so many worries over money and material, grades and tests, college and careers. Society rushes from one moment to another, there is a worldwide rat race that really has no meaning because, sooner or later, we forget all the nonsense that drives the impulse that takes us to school/work every day or keep us up late at night. The burden of life has fallen so early into our lap, without even having been able to fully enjoy it yet.media type="file" key="laurenp-muckraker-0910.mp3"