Here's To The Night

I've always loved Sundays. Sunday is the day that you get to go to church, and as corny as it might sound, by the end of the week I seriously need three hours of spiritual upliftment. Being a college student is hard. You wake up early and go to school, then spend way more time than is healthy cooped up in some dingy corner in the library trying to cram as much information as possible into your brain (people sometimes call this studying), and then you go home and go to bed and do it all over again the next day.

When I was in high school I used to look forward to the weekends, but I've noticed that in college the things you are always focusing the most on is when your next test is and when in the world you are going to find time to study for it. In General Conference this year Elder Uchtdorf (who knows how you spell this name) spoke on how today everyone is always so busy. "We are always rushing from one impossible deadline to the next," he said, and then he encouraged us to slow down a little. "It is not requisite that we run faster than we have strength."

So I started thinking of things that I could do to make my life less hectic, less busy, and I realized that it really just comes down to what your priorities are. I know school is supposed to be the most important thing in my life right now, but sometimes I'd really just rather slow down for a while and enjoy my life!

Last night my roommates and I dressed up in warm clothes and drove around shooting water balloons out of the back of a pickup with a water balloon launcher and I had such a good time! It was the night before Halloween, and since Halloween was on a Sunday this year, everyone celebrated it on Saturday night, and as we were driving I couldn't help but wonder how many people were wasting their night getting wasted at some lame party, while me and my friends were having the time of our lives doing something we would actually remember the next morning. Come to think of it, maybe that's why they say people who are drinking are getting "wasted"...because they are wasting their time doing something that 90% of the time they either won't remember, or will end up regretting.

Anyways, it was raining pretty hard last night, and since Erin was worried about getting arrested at one point she made all of us that were in the back "lay low" while she drove us to a spot where we could launch some more balloons. So there I was, laying in the back of a pickup with a cold wind blowing up my pant legs and getting soaked from the rain and all I could think about was how I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment than where I was. True, it would've been smarter to get inside the pickup, but it's times like those that I will never forget.

When I look back at college, I'm not going to be able to tell you whether Staphylococcus aureus is gram positive or gram negative, or what the origins and insertions of the muscles in your body are, but I will be able to tell that for about a month, I went to the pool every single day with Kimber and learned all about her life. I'll remember accidentely launching a water balloon into the cab of a pickup, and trying to hit signs with balloons with rain drops hitting me in the eyes so hard I couldn't see. I'll remember sitting at my desk and talking to Genniel through the wall without even having to raise my voice, and how we never practiced the guitar and our teacher thought we were idiots.

I'll remember sitting around telling stories and laughing for hours, and I'll even remember the times when we weren't doing anything at all. When we would just sit on the couch or lie on somebody's bed and talk about how our day had gone and what we had learned at school. I know I'm supposed to be focusing on getting into the Nursing program right now so I can graduate in four years and go out into the real world and work for the rest of my life, but to be honest, that really doesn't seem as important to me right now as making memories does, because eventually there will come a time when I do have to go to work every day and I won't have the luxury of spending time with good friends whenever I want to.

Life is short, I've always been extremely aware of this fact, and my biggest fear has always been that one day I'll find myself laying on my death bed regretting all of the wasted time. So even though I should be focusing on school more than anything, my main focus is really to just be happy and live the best life I can. One of my favorite songs has always been "Here's To The Night" by Eve 6, so in honor of that great song, "Here's to the nights we felt alive!" Thank you to those people that have always been there to help me celebrate that great event we call life, and to those that remind me on a daily basis how important it is to make the most of it.