The Inkling Volume 3

I wrote in one of my previous articles that the people we know
as teenagers shape us for the rest of our lives. Perhaps this is why we
feel so connected to old friends. These peers who made us the people
we are today feel important to us, whether we want to care about
them or not. Particularly if we have drifted away from these people,
we miss the times when they were still a major part of our lives. Also,
we tend to associate the days when we knew the people who shaped
us with a golden age, as such: an aforementioned glamorised period
of adolescence.
As teenagers, school can make situations like this even more
difficult. Due to the structure of the British education system, we see
the same people every week-day for five years between being eleven
and sixteen. It’s inevitable that within this group we find friends,
enemies, boyfriends and girlfriends, and oftentimes, seeing them so
regularly is fantastic: it makes it easy to stay in contact with people
and allows time for truly meaningful friendships to form and blossom.
However, it also means that when we have arguments there is no way
to really distance ourselves. While in the outside world it’s easy to
decide to cut people out of your life, at school it’s impossible. That
said, it does encourage forgiveness - when there’s no option but to
see someone everyday, you might as well get on with them. But I
digress. The point is that it can feel both impossible to reach the past
and impossible to escape it.
But what about the future? For some people, it’s the only thing
that matters. There’s exams, trips, prom, sixth form, more exams, uni,
jobs, people, houses, lifestyles...so much will happen and so much
will change. We’re constantly being reminded to plan our futures;
from choosing our GCSEs at thirteen or fourteen to pretty much
choosing a career path at eighteen, these really are the years in
which we pick our futures. So, you may say, why live in the moment
when you’ve got so much to come? The fact is, there’s always going
to be a future to plan. If we’re always thinking ahead, we’ll forget to
have a present to remember.
Nostalgia is a difficult thing. It’s hard to live in the moment; hard
to accept that the past is out of reach. The trick is to be satisfied with
your life as it is now, imperfections, good days, bad days and all. Do
your best to be happy, because soon these will be the days you’re
wishing you could get back.