Routine is toxic. Though essential, it makes time drift away. Before we know it, we spend our most precious years doing something that is created to help the future and not the present. We hear, “work hard now, and play hard later.” Why not combine the two, now and later. Why should we section a part of life to be miserable?

Think about it. Every day, we wake up, go to class, maybe go to the gym and we think it is good for us. Well, that is good for us because it makes the days go by faster. And sometimes days ending feel like the best cure of your stressful day. But instead of always wishing a limit to your day, why not switch your mentality? Ask yourself, when is the last time you begged for your day to end? Yesterday? Maybe even this very moment; as you read this article scrolling through Facebook in your most boring class? Now, ask yourself, when was the last time I never wanted my day to end? Why is this number depleted to just weekends and summer days? Why don’t we think like this every day?

We need to get out of this cycle of wishing our day’s goodbye because it’s hard to realize we are even allowing it to affect the quality of our lives. We realize the banality of this daily routine when we go off campus or surround ourselves with scenery that is foreign to that of our daily trivialities. It is then that we realize how toxic this cycle actually is. We realize how it is allowing us to let the little moments drift away. We allow precious time to go unnoticed until we break away or even until our realization that we cannot turn back time. We allow the making of our future, like going to class to major in a certain profession, to be more vital than spending our lives feeling infinite or feeling amazed by how happy we feel in the instances of milliseconds. And, for me, those are the moments I live for. The moments that are so undeniably happy that it feels like you are drifting, infinite, and surrounded by the laughter of everyone feeling the same exact way. In that exact moment you realize that everyone near you is as present as you are; feeling the wind between their hands hanging out of the car and listening to the same chords that each of your wavelengths are silently in sync with. And that’s when you realize you are smiling and you didn’t even know it.

I realize this every time I adventure off campus. I know that I am in college for my education and that I need routine for this reason. But, sometimes, instead of waking my brain, I need to awake my soul. These are the things that keep me sane; these are the things that keep me from falling into my biggest fear. I never want to find myself waking up at an old age realizing that I grew too old to do the things I wanted to do in my life. I feel that this is not only a fear of mine but also a fear of many people who are walking this world. Either, with a briefcase in their hand apart of the daily bustle of life, sitting at a desk in a fluorescently lit office space, or sitting at home with their kids, drained and emotionally wrecked.

We waste our lives trying to earn something tangible, like money or a partner, to live a life of youth. We get jobs to fulfill the things we want to as youths or to foster our own children’s youth. So much so, that we forget to realize the gift of youth is something that we are already graced with when we are born. And, that is not something that can ever be taken away from us. There is nothing we have to pay for to have a youthful mentality. Yes, we will figuratively spend our time as we lose years off of our lives when we grow old. But, if you are someone that is deprived of the life they wished they lived or the things that you haven’t done, know that this mentality is not something that is too far-gone. If you are searching for these things in your life and don’t know how to actually achieve them, it's not too late. But it is time to let your days last a little bit longer—miserable or not. It’s time to allow yourself to say “yes” to the things you never could see yourself doing. Don’t let the banalities of life swallow you whole.