This year for Lent I am giving up. I really tried to think about what I should give up this year and I couldn’t think of anything that I would really stick with. I have friends giving up dairy, but I love chocolate milk too much. I have friends giving up junk food but Chick-fil-A’s waffle fries are basically the only thing getting me out of bed now. So instead of giving up A Thing, I’m giving up EVERY thing.
Now, I’m not really religious. If I’m being honest, this whole Lent thing is just to go with the trend. I also believe it’s the second chance for everyone who already failed at their New Year resolution. But for me, it’s just another topic of conversation, another thing to tweet about and another thing to laugh at when I fail miserably at it.
Not this year, because at this point I’m at rock bottom and you can only go up from there. It’s proven fact. So what is “every thing?” The way I see it, I’m just going to stop trying at life. Before you go on thinking that this is some miserably tragic piece about how I’m giving up on the world, relax. It’s not. It’s like I’m at some big planning meeting that I didn’t even want to get invited to. I’m trying furiously to plan out my whole future, my whole year, my whole month, my whole week. I’m even planning out what to do with the hole in my one pair of jeans—it’s awkwardly bigger than all the other rips and just makes the whole pair seem awfully unbalanced.
It’s too much planning for a 20-year-old to be thinking about. Granted, I’m about to be a senior, a thing I am in deep denial about, so it’s logical for me to be thinking about post-college life and what I plan to do with it. But it’s stressing me out, and frankly, I just don’t want to deal with it. I find it quite rude now when people ask me what I want to do with my potential degree. First of all, “potential?” I made it this far, you best bet I’m getting that degree. Second of all, please slow your roll. I can’t even legally drink yet, so you expecting me to have an exact job picked out is a bit of a high standard, thank you very much.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have an idea of what I want to do. Obviously I know what field it’s going to be in, but I couldn’t pick out the job title in a lineup. So, for now, I’m just not going to worry about it! I’m going to give up trying to plan out my entire life schedule. And maybe once Easter rolls around, I’ll just pretend to start trying again and see what happens. I’m not trying to think too hard about it, or honestly think at all.
But maybe I’m more religious than I think. For everyone calling it blasphemy, maybe it’s time to dust off the good ol’ Book and look back to Matthew 6:25. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life… who by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
Kaitlin Ryan is a third-year student majoring in communication studies with a minor in journalism. She can be reached at KR822409@wcupa.edu.