JULIE FROMM / ASST. OPINION EDITOR

I have written the phrase, “I’m trying to be more present,” in my diary more times than I can count. It feels ritualistic, reminding myself constantly to stay in the moment and to not look too far into the future. My anxiety has always convinced me that it’s best to think three steps ahead and to try to have things figured out for my future, so much so that I can’t enjoy what is presently happening around me. I’ll plan for a moment, like my college graduation, so far in advance that when the moment actually arrives, I’ve moved on to my post-graduation plans and where I want to be in 2027. 

If there is one thing I wish I could change about my college experience, it would be to let things happen in their own time. In the few moments where I have relinquished my control of the future and enjoyed the present, like ignoring the urge to try and plan where I want to live a year from now for example, I have felt more alive and joyful than ever before. 

Planning makes me feel safe. When I know what’s coming, I can prepare myself and be ready for it when it comes. But this is delusional  thinking because even in the moments where I have planned everything out, things never happen the way that I think they will. When something goes awry, an idea  doesn’t work  out or if I  felt  scared at  the time, I eventually look back and  know that it worked out anyway. Six months ago, I thought I would be moving to a new  city to live with my boyfriend; in two months, I’ll be leaving San Diego to live on my own, and I’m no longer in a relationship. If I told myself six months ago that this was the case, I would have broken down in tears and scrambled to find a solution. There were tears, but I can see now that this was a beautiful thing. Plans fall through, and as scary as that may be for someone like me, I am constantly reminding myself that the plans that fall through are the ones that weren’t meant to happen in the first place. 

When I reflect on my college experience, I don’t think about the anxiety I had before tests, the heartbreaks I experienced or the stress I felt about what would come next. I remember the moments I spent lounging on the couch with my friends, laughing until we couldn’t breathe. I remember walking across campus on the first few days of my first year, thinking about how unbelievably lucky I was to be going to this school. I remember all the seemingly insignificant moments that I spent with my best friends, which are now my  most  cherished  memories. 

Your time is valuable, it’s important to spend time with your loved ones.  Photo courtesy of @meredithspencer22/Unsplash

With graduation quickly approaching, those are the moments I wish I could go back to and relive one more time. And there’s nothing I wish more than to have been more present and more aware when those moments  were  actually happening. 

Harvard University conducted a study about the link between happiness and being present. 

“One of the keys to happiness lies in simply redirecting our attention from mind wandering and distraction to what’s happening right here, right now in the present moment,” the study said. 

The more we focus on what could happen to us in the future, instead of what is actually happening to us in the present, the less fulfilled we will feel. Even in the most mundane moments, like walking from class to class or going through the carwash, keeping your attention in the moment can make you feel happier and can even make time feel like it’s moving slower. My undergraduate experience felt like it passed in the blink of an eye, and I wish that I had practiced mindfulness beginning my first-year  so that I could maybe look back and feel the experience more fully in my memory. 

But even  now as  I  write this, I am thinking about what I should have  done   differently, or  what I wish I had done my first or second year of college. In the past few months, though, with graduation quickly approaching and my time with my best friends growing even shorter, I have implemented mindfulness practices into my daily life. 

When my friends and I are sitting around the house rehashing our best stories from the weekend, I look around at each of them and listen intently, grounding myself in the moment. When I walk on the boardwalk in the morning, I breathe in the smell of the ocean and try to memorize it so I can think back to it when I move across the country in a few short months. 

I am constantly trying to ground myself in the here and now, because if I have learned anything from college, it’s that time escapes us, and the only way to hold onto it is to stay in the moment. 

As I move forward into my future and say goodbye to some of the greatest years of my life, I know that I will cherish the moments I shared with my friends in college forever. But I also know that I will cherish the moments to come, too — moments that I can’t even imagine yet. And when those moments do come, I know that I will do whatever I can to soak in the feeling of it before it’s gone. 

It’s important to be present and savor the moment. Photo courtesy of @azizacharki/Unsplash

The views expressed in the editorial and op-ed sections are not necessarily those of  The USD Vista staff, the University of San Diego, or its student body.