This is a guest post by Kaitlyn Myers. Kaitlyn (she/her/hers) is an active member of Slippery Rock University’s SPARK Club in her senior year as an English major with a Gerontology minor. She’s an advocate for embracing the everyday feelings that make us all human.
I struggle to not look ahead. As a planner by default, if I can’t see the future, even if it is a bit hazy, I’m anxious. Which is where I am now.
As a senior college student with one semester left, I genuinely can’t predict where I will be next December. In a job? Still at home? Out of that state? I don’t know.
This time of uncertainty is unsettling. I’m finding, though, that I need this.
Since I can’t gauge my future, I have to live in the here and now. I’m finding that I’m cherishing things around me more. My camera roll is full of everyday delights: my yummy lunch, a night in with my roommate, my apartment in the morning glow, my academic building. I don’t want to forget this time by stressing about what comes when I am no longer in this stage of my life.
Over the summer, I read Emily Henry’s book Beach Read and the quote “happy-for-now” lingers in my mind. I’m not any less anxious for what my future holds, but I can control what I remember from this time. I am happy-for-now in this in-between phase of life, teetering on the edge of full adulthood.
I’m trying to be more content to just soak in the next few months of certainty. Hence my camera roll that is memorializing the everyday things that I can love and embrace now. The happiness that endures alongside my anxiety.
As human beings we can hold so many emotions. This heavy, ever-present shadow of change is just one feeling. The everyday moments are bound to bring me one spark of happiness. After all, isn’t that the whole point of The Smile Project?
So, here I am, happy-for-now. I am leaning into the uncertainty to relish in the joy that abounds around me.
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