Recently, my life has been going surprisingly well. I have been blessed with so many new opportunities and friendships this year that I have been (overwhelmingly, sometimes) happy. But for some reason, I have not been allowing myself to enjoy this happiness; despite the fact that everything has been fantastic, I am constantly waiting for something bad to occur. Over the years, it has become an expectation that something bad is always waiting to happen.

I have developed this irrational fear that good things are incapable of lasting long; this is probably due to the fact that, in the past, I have been unable to validate that I deserve to have good in my life all the time. For some reason, it feels so unnatural when nothing bad is happening in my life that I begin to anticipate the next awful thing that is going to take place. Is it possible that in doing this—trying to predict the possibility of negativity in the future—I am losing opportunities to enjoy even the small, positive moments?

Maybe I feel the need to predict the potentially bad things that can happen to me in the future because I am terrified that I will be unable to handle them if I am not already prepared. Because, if you know something terrible is going to happen, it becomes a little bit more manageable. It is important to realize, though, that predicting the future is absolutely impossible…making it a complete waste of time. Recognizing this as an impossibility, why is it still so hard to let go of these fears, and just be happy in the moment?

Living in the moment is difficult, especially in college. There are always classes and club meetings to attend, assignments to get done, different friend groups to see, social outings to go to and part time jobs to maintain (in order to pay for everything listed above). Moments of solitude are rare and are often filled with thoughts of the vast amount of activities that are to come the following day. But constantly being worried about what’s to come is not a good way to live, and it definitely is not going to make you happy.

Sometimes, you just have to let go, whatever the fear may be. Let go of the fear of the unknown; the fear of messing up or having something go wrong in the future. Let go of the assumption that just because things have failed in the past, or turned out to be mistakes, that they will happen again. Let go of the fear of starting a new relationship. Learn how to trust yourself, and believe that everything will work out in the end. Because, trust me, living a life when you’re constantly afraid that your world is going to come crashing down in a split second is miserable, and it will prevent you from discovering who you truly are and living a life that you fully enjoy.