By: Hannah Ahn

   For the longest time, I hated nostalgia. Avoided the feeling of it entirely, in songs, films, books. My reasoning was simple. Nostalgia isn’t very efficient. And in the act of looking back, you’re missing something zooming past your eyes at that very moment. How many rom-coms have been derailed by the protagonist running after a crappy ex-boyfriend in the airport, unable to see the brilliant leading man being blocked at that exact moment by a passing plane? Nostalgia, for me, is that passing plane– always blocking something important, something you might want to see. 

   Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge proponent of excavating through the past. There’s a luster to the new, but humans are, for reasons inexplicable by evolution, drawn to the old. Old songs, vintage clothes, old friends. Old things tether us to the cherished past, and the past is what makes up the molecular DNA of ourselves in the present moment. All of life is memory. By the time you have absorbed the exact second of your living, the moment of living has already passed. As a child, I used to play a game where I would sit on the floor and try to concentrate, really concentrate, on the exact second I was existing in– the feeling of the cold hardwood against my knees, the exact beige of my living room, the warmth of sunlight against my back. As if somehow, by memorizing that moment, I could memorialize it and encase it forever in amber. It never worked. The moment slipped through my fingers every time. 

   As a teenager, I’ve taken the opposite approach. I think of the future relentlessly. In one of my favorite short stories, the narrator describes how much she loves to think of the future– because she can assemble and disassemble it like a jigsaw puzzle, never knowing how the pieces are going to fit. You can project all of your hopes and dreams onto the future. I thought of college relentlessly all of high school, and upon being accepted to my first choice school, I was overcome with joy. Still, I thought of other things. I began to think relentlessly of how I was going to finance my college career, the internships I’d have to inevitably attain, and of roommates. I began dreaming of the nebulous, shapeless future again. 

   I think part of this future-looking mindset has contributed to my scholastic success. High-achievers are, after all, prepared, and a byproduct of anxiety about the future is preparedness. Yet these days, I can’t help but wonder: What are we supposed to do with all of this time? 

   How do we spend our lives? In a way that is meaningful, thoughtful, and productive to society? Are these even useful criteria by which to measure our brief, at-most-seventy-year entanglements here on Earth? By 17 I thought I would have discovered the skeletal framework of an ethos. I’ve been a writer all of my life, and stories tend to follow neat narrative frameworks: beginning, middle, ending. Yet of course, a life isn’t a story, in the sense that we don’t get to write it. So, how does one even begin to think of their time? Do you follow the advice of specialized life coaches and plan it all out six months in advance? Five years in advance, to be prepared for job interviewers who ask where you’ll see yourself in half a decade’s time? Or maybe you listen to the self-help gurus, who spill out tried-and-true, conventional wisdom: Take it one day at a time. 

   In an age full of doom-scrolling and all facets of our lives seemingly fine-tuned to be as algorithmic and addicting as possible, it’s so easy to lose track of time. It’s so easy to forget how carefully this time has been allotted for us. That in the middle centuries, half of us would have been dead already from disease, starvation, or freak farming accidents. Modern technology allows for society to compound on the time they’ve gained back through the Internet, the microwave, and pre-chopped garlic. 

   I’m not always productive. Sometimes I do waste my time. I sleep in. I scroll TikTok. I choose to eat junk food, to forgo my evening runs, things that are more likely to shorten my lifespan than elongate it. But even while participating in these activities, I try to remain profoundly appreciative of life. Life is made up of so many jigsaw puzzles, good and bad. And to receive all of these experiences, through the mortal, brief vessel of my body, is an astonishing experience. I notice the color of the leaves. I run for an extra mile. I chose to have another three chips past the daily intake recommendation. And when I come across a stupid Instagram Reel of dogs wrestling with each other for treats, I laugh, instead of berating myself for not finishing the neglected copy of Anna Karenina on my dresser. 

   Whatever the case, I want to be proud of the way I spent my time, but I also want to understand that my time is my own, and that time is not merely the price we pay to construct a final version of a life for other people to ooh and ahh at. Time is a deeply personal thing. My time is entirely my own, and yet I share it with billions of people across the globe. This time that we all briefly inhabit together. My final wish as columnist, then, is that as I head into this next chapter of my life, I can fully say, whether pursuing my education, spending time with my family and friends, or achieving a sense of “purpose” in my life, that I find myself satisfied, and ultimately, grateful to have time to contemplate how I spend it, to possess a life, and therefore possess the choice to do and find good within it.