Today is the first day of school.
Well, let me amend that statement: It’s the first day of
school for almost everybody.
This morning, I laid in my bed, listening to the sounds of
my housemates getting ready—getting ready for their first day of school. I closed my eyes and rolled over with mixed
feelings about not having to get up yet.
Now, a couple hours later, the house is quiet. And I hear the high-pitched sounds of
excitement from the kids on campus who are kicking off their new school
year. Drifting through the windows they
break up the quiet and serve as the soundtrack for reflection.
On Monday, we were given our placements for the upcoming
school year. I’ll be working in the
Psychico Elementary School here, helping in the various English classes across
grades 1st through 6th.
I waited to find out more from the school’s coordinators about official
start dates and specific duties and etc.—and as I kept waiting to hear, my
waiting turned to waiting anxiously.
Eventually, we learned that we wouldn’t officially be starting at our
school until Monday, September 14th, and were told to enjoy the
downtime in the meantime.
Which is nice—it really is.
The problem with downtime in the meantime is that I have a hard time
making the most of every moment of time when its downtime I don’t feel like I
should be having in a meantime that separates me from the start time of a new,
exciting, pretty significant time in my life.
But who has the time to listen to these silly complaints
about having free time??
Soon enough I’ll be busy enough that these moments of
downtime in the meantime will seem a distant memory, one I’ll long to return
to. It’s a lesson I didn’t think I’d
have to learn, and one I didn’t think I’d struggle with so much: making the
most of your time here means taking and accepting and living every moment you
are given, even when its not quite in the form or duration you were
expecting—even when it’s unexpected downtime in the meantime.
For in this time, I’ve been able to read, write, think,
walk, run, sleep, rest, dream, anticipate, live, enjoy (for the most part). At
least, I’m learning to.
Maybe making the most of every moment doesn’t look exactly
like I thought it did. It’s not just
about keeping your eyes open against the glare of the sun and pushing your legs
to climb one more set of stairs to see the Acropolis. It’s not just about trying that new dish, the
ingredients of which are shrouded in mystery.
It’s not just about saying “Kalimera” even if you’re not completely
confident in your pronunciation or the response you’ll get. Sure, all of those moments are examples of
ones you should seek to capture and capitalize when you’re making the most of
every moment, but they’re not the only ones.
Because making the most of every moment also means learning
to be content with where you are, when you are there, for however long you are
there, regardless of the circumstances in which you are there. It means picking up a book and reading
instead of scrolling numbly, endlessly through Facebook. It means turning your mindless thoughts and
wrestling into words and putting them on paper (or Word) to sort out. It means talking to your neighbor, making a
new friend. It means going for a walk, a
run that takes you beyond the walls of what you know—it means taking just one
more step outside the walls of your comfort zone, whatever that may look like,
to explore, to breathe, to live.
It means making the most of downtime in the meantime…
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