At 18 years old, when I graduated high school, I had the whole world figured out. And at 19 years old, I laughed at the idiocy of my 18-year-old self. Life is never concrete, and this world is ever-changing, daring us to just try to figure it out. We waste away minutes trying to rationalize other people’s actions. We use too much oxygen making excuses for ourselves and for other people and empty explanations of why our generation is the way it is. Though world peace may never be achieved, and life will never stop being challenging, and people will never stop disappointing, and I will never stop pointlessly analyzing, I will still choose to be happy.

When I was younger, my dad’s idea of a “heartbreak cure” was Lynyrd Skynyrd and a couple of back roads. As I belted the lyrics to “Curtis Lowe,” his hand reached for the knob of the radio, and the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd sizzled to silence. After a couple of moments, Dad looked over at me. “Nobody can control your happiness but you,” he said. “You can choose to let the circumstances control your life, or you can choose to be happy regardless of the circumstances. It’s your choice. It’s your happiness.” Then, he reached for the knob, and the chorus to Free Bird filled the car. Over the years, I’ve shed a few more tears and I’ve laughed a few more laughs. Dad would often remind me to revisit our drive that day. “It’s your choice. It’s your happiness.”

At 19 and in college, this whole ever-changing world is at your fingertips. All too often, though, we lose our sense of self in a place designed for us to find ourselves. We allow the unknown to consume us, people to hurt us, challenges to cripple us, and mediocrity to overtake us. And we forget that the unknown is exciting, people are only human, challenges mold your character, and that mediocrity is not security but simply a product of our fear. All too often, we allow circumstances to control us.

We wait for a better moment, place, community, time, and for different circumstances to arrive. We allow the future to steal the opportunities of today. We forget that it’s okay not to have the world figured out quite yet. We put off living in the present so that we can focus on living in the future, because the future seems so much better, so much more “put together.” The future is a clean slate and a new beginning.

The present, the “right now” we’re living, is often messy and sometimes ugly. Occasionally, it downright sucks, but while we mentally live in the future, we rob ourselves of the present joy that “right now” has to offer. We miss out on the lessons God is teaching us and the people who are currently investing in us. And we forget to live our lives. Ecclesiastes 3:11 promises, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.”

“Nobody can control your happiness but you. You can choose to let the circumstances control your life, or you can choose to be happy regardless of the circumstances. It’s your choice. It’s your happiness.” There is no better time to live, to be happy, to be present, than the present.