Sam+O’s+OpEd+Article

= media type="file" key="Sam's meditation.mov" width="300" height="300" align="center""Sam wants to enjoy life as it happens" = =// By Sam O'Donnell //=

He wakes up so he can go to school. He goes to school so he can get into an excellent college. He attends an excellent college so he can attend an even more excellent graduate school. He attends an even more excellent graduate school so he can have a well-paying job. He gets a well-paying job so he can afford a comfortable American life. He keeps working so he can retire. He retires so he can settle down and finally enjoy life. Then, suddenly and without warning, he is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and rapidly deteriorates.

This may sound like a generic sob story about someone who never learned to “enjoy life,” but this is exactly what happened to my grandfather.

What was it all for? Why did he work so hard day in, day out, just to end up terminally ill with a miserable quality of life? To truly enjoy being on this wonderful Earth, one must live in the moment, enjoying each and every second of breathtaking awareness.

As high school students, we spend hours upon hours preparing ourselves for what will come. Everything we do must be “seen through the eyes of the college.” For too many, there is no such thing as free time, only volunteering, homework, piano lessons, sports, etc. In other words, we devote ourselves to influencing the future rather than accepting the present. Life is endless preparation. It’s easy to see why so many teenagers give up. To them, life is useless. One thing leads to the next, which leads to something else, and on and on to infinity; nothing ever just //is//. Yet, nihilism accomplishes nothing: life is not hopeless if it is actually embraced for what it is.

Nine out of ten students agree that teachers put too heavy of a burden upon their students. To them, this is the reason that they are stressed, dissatisfied, and even depressed. While there is a limit to what should be asked of a student, these students wouldn’t be so unhappy if they learned to love what they were doing. Why can’t they just learn for the sake of learning? The system itself is not to blame, but rather the attitude with which one goes through the system.

There is a centuries-old parable that goes something like this: There was once a man walking through a field in India. All of a sudden, he heard a rustling, and out of the grass came a tiger. The tiger burst forth toward the man, so he began to run for his life. After he had been running for a while, the tiger close behind, he came to a cliff. He realized that the only way to escape the tiger would be to climb down a vine on the face of the cliff. He slowly rappelled down the cliff until he had gotten low enough that the tiger pacing above could not reach him. As he readied himself to jump down to safety, he noticed that a second tiger was roaming below him, waiting for him to jump. As he came to the realization that this was now a war of attrition, he caught sight of two mice, nibbling on the vine above him, slowly working their way through it. He knew that, within a few minutes, he would fall. He quickly said his prayers and prepared to die; as he was doing this, he beheld something shiny and red on the face of the cliff. He reached in front of him and pulled a large, ripe strawberry off its vine. He put the strawberry in his mouth and at once remarked, “How sweet and delicious this strawberry is!”

Take life one step at a time, savoring each moment.