We are too busy hiding our heads behind weighty tomes in order learn chemical formulae and laws by heart that we will forget very soon. Our aim is a successful final degree, just to start afterwards an all the more successful career. Therefore, we are sitting for weeks behind big screens because the next deadline for the twenty-page term paper has to be met at any price. No, today we do not have time to go out with our friends. Since we were little, we have already been instilled that work always comes before pleasure. As if we first had to deserve it to live.
John Lennon once said: ""Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans". And he proved to be right. As soon as our duties get a higher priority than enjoying life, something is likely going wrong. One day we will probably wake up and ask ourselves: "Have we actually lived?"
We will be even older, have more obligations and will devote our life to our family, our children - if we will have some. With age, it will not be easier and the problems will not become any smaller.
We have unlearned to live consciously!
Nevertheless, living consciously is easier said than done. I, too, have realized lately, how easy it is to abandon oneself to the daily grind and to conjure up excuses, why it is not possible to allow oneself some fun. The society has imposed norms on us that tell us how to live. We can see it in our fellow men, day after day. At the extreme, we are talking about those who just turned 17 and have already started to study. Ideally, they are accomplishing their Bachelor study program within three years and are taking right after that their Master's degree. Finally, they are standing with their young 23 years in the middle of the working world. Most of the students will probably complete their Master's degree in average with 27. And their lives, we use as guidelines.
So, what about you?
Social networks like Facebook give us incentives to always compare ourselves with other people. Person XY has already done this and that, completed a semester abroad, has already done its doctorate and now works for a highly respected company. And I stand here, in the seventh semester of my Bachelor program and ask myself if something was going wrong.