The other day I was talking with a friend about college girls – you know, the bubbly, naive, carefree, fresh, sometimes pretty, sometimes available, fun kind.
Funny enough we both expressed nostalgia about our college days, of how we lacked the awareness to make the most of our early college days with these young women, because you know, it isn’t the same once you’re out of college and everyone’s older and more cynical.
And it hit me – Nostalgia is self-perpetuating. You dream of yesterday today, and you’ll dream of today tomorrow – if you don’t have the courage to seize the moment wherever you are, every day.
It is easy to reminisce about opportunities lost and imagine yourself being capable of taking advantage of them if you were to go back and do it again. It is tougher to actually practice that belief when you get that opportunity again. And you get those opportunities again and again in your life, wherever you are (unless you deliberately pluck yourself away from society and prefer total isolation).
“No Regrets” is a wonderful maxim to live life by, but it requires you to make the best of what you have at the moment (whether it is in terms of creating opportunities or taking advantage of them) instead of living in the past or fretting about the future. Eliminate nostalgia – carpe diem. If not now, when?
For the record the conversation at the start of this post is illustrative, not instructive. Please don’t go around bothering college girls, tackle women / girls of your own generation, because you won’t get the chance to do so in 5-10 years.