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Perfect imperfection
Allie Pitcher
Updated: June 11, 2012 8:13AM
On of my favorite Bible verses, Psalms 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days aright, so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Translated by my teenage brain, to me, that says, “Live life wisely because life is short.”
In the beginning of this school year, that was my phrase. I wrote in by my night stand and on my desk so that I read it and reminded myself of it’s importance every day. I valued the words of this passage and we certain that I was doing a fine job at living a good life and “numbering my days aright.” I always did my homework, got good grades in school, never cheated or cursed and was nice to my brother as much as I possibly could. (If you knew the turd, you’d know it was a near impossible task.)
I was doing everything as I should, right? I was pleased with how my senior year was going. Or maybe I should say “content.”
As the year went on, the college process progressed and the weekend of my 18th birthday, I decided on a school. I would be attending the University of Illinois, a school I was very proud to commit to.
It wasn’t until after I made my college decision that I had a major reality check. I was sharing the excitement of my college decision with a friend via Skype when they said, “There’s a point in college when you realize that your life will never be the same again.”
This hit me like a rock, or maybe more like a bullet that injures you just bad enough to keep you alive, but has a huge life changing impact on you.
As this and my favorite Psalm raced through my head for the next weeks, I began to think of all the things I would soon have to give up as I left for college.
No more sitting in my mom’s office after school, talking about all the drama that happened at school that day. No more Chinese Checkers tournaments with my dad after homework is done. No more yelling at my brother to turn his music down while I’m studying. Maybe I wont miss that part, but just the fact that I’ll never be able to do it again hit me.
I started looking at all the things around me more and imagining what life would be like without them next year. I soon realized that much of what is need in life is what I take most for granted.
With this in mind, I decided to make my last few months of high school really count. I made a point to go to games of every different sport, do more things that I enjoy and make every second count. I pushed myself to do as much as I possibly could. After all, that’s what “numbering our days aright,” means anyways, right?
Everything I did I made sure was exactly what I wished to be doing then at that moment. As crazy as it seems, I wanted to make sure that when I was a little grandma, I had some pretty awesome stories to tell my grandchildren. After all, no one looks back on their life and remembers the nights they had plenty of sleep.
This decision to make the most of my time seemed perfect at first, but I soon realized that going to lifetime, talking to an old friend, studying for every class and spending quality time with my family all on each and every day can put a lot of pressure on one person to do everything enjoyable known to mankind.
I pushed and pushed and pushed through all the craziness of trying to live a perfectly exciting life until I finally cracked. I realized that I was caring more about what I was doing than actually taking the time to enjoy it. I was missing the excitement of my senior year all along!
Once more, I decided I needed to make a change.
I needed to live perfectly imperfect. I decided to do what I liked and what I thought was right and applied a little words of wisdom from one great philosopher.
“Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” -Ferris Bueller
Allie Pitcher is a senior at Hinsdale Central High School
