Saturday, February 01, 2014

The Most Interesting Half an Hour of My Life

To be completely honest, I never knew that half an hour could be so earth shattering, so confusing and yet so amazing in that one instance.

Half an hour was the amount of time it took to take close to 50 different shots for grad photos. Admittedly the flash got in my eyes and made them smaller than usual. I was blinded for mere seconds to return back to reality, wearing heels that gave me 4 extra inches in height and more make up than I was used to.

In half an hour, my entire life flashed before my eyes.. literally.

Okay, so maybe I'm extremely melodramatic. I wasn't in danger at any point during this shoot, but during this occasion when I slipped into the graduation gown for the first time and looked at myself in the mirror, the cinema began playing.

It is so strange to think that in 5 months time, I will be graduating. I have been waiting for this day for 13 years, and it came quicker than I anticipated it to do so. The fact that I am moving on from one stage of my life to a new one is weird to me. This life is all I have ever known, and this coming September I will be put into a new life.

I realize that I tend to over think things, and this year I've tried my best to take things as they come and go with the flow of things. What is inevitable is that whether I like it or not, I'm still graduating. I'm going to have to move on when the commencements happen in June. We all age and time continues to tick on; it waits for no one.

With each picture taken a flash would go off every 15 seconds. Every 15 seconds a part of my life would dance before my eyes. For that half an hour I relived every memorable moment in my life, and when the photographers told me that it was done, I was brought back to the person I am now. I wish I could remember what ran through my mind when I was the ages of 3 or 7 or 12 or 15. My mind only stretches so far, but yet in that half an hour everything had rushed back into my memory like flooding water.

During this time I also realized that I spend way too much time feeling unhappy about things that aren't worth my time. Admittedly I like to do that, not because I "like" to but because that's just who I am and it's what I've been doing for.. ever.

I need to make the first step to realize that I can choose to be sad, or I can choose to move on. If time flies this quickly and 18 years can go by in the blink of an eye, then there is no time to waste by being sad. Why do we let these things take over our minds and memories? It seems that all we remember are the negative things when really, we should be focusing on the positives and let these happy times burn into our memories.

Walking away from what was advertised to me as another photo shoot helped me to realize how quickly life goes by, how short it truly is and how we all deserve to be happy in this short life of ours. After all, if we are happy, then life will be more enjoyable and be a lot longer.

So live life, be happy, and spill more ink while you do so.