By Caroline Keller, Year 12
What if you could flip the switch on your emotions? One day you would be heartbroken and the next you wouldn’t feel a thing. What if you could control time? One day you would be failing a high school math exam and the next you would be living life after college. What if you could gain all the knowledge in the world? One day you would be clueless and the next you would be the smartest person in the room. What if you could know what people thought? One day you would be looking over your shoulder and the next confidently strutting down the street.
With all these what if’s you easily spiral and end up where you started in your bedroom thinking. Instead of doing homework you’re overthinking and getting anxious over things that won’t even happen. I used to be the same. The night before exams I would start freaking out because I didn’t study enough, or I received texts from people asking me if I knew what coordinate covalent bonds were and I just blanked. I biked to school overthinking. By the time I got there I didn’t know how I got there or what I was doing there all I knew was that I didn’t know what coordinate covalent bonds were. It was all I thought about during my English exam, my History exam, and finally when that question came up on my Chemistry paper it was only worth 2 marks, but it had taken over my life for 36 hours.
Every teenager at some point does this kind of thing; overthinks so much that it takes over their entire life. What they don’t understand is that the minute you stop overthinking and you start living in the moment that that’s when existing becomes living. That’s when you stop caring about the small things and you strive for making the most out of everything. That’s when you don’t compare yourself to what others are doing but you go down your own path that you’re paving. Make the most out of every day – overthinking the past will not make the present, or the future, any better.
