Anticipation

Anna Noumtinis Bilingual Journalist

When people get married, the first questions they get asked are about the future: When are you going on your honeymoon? When are you buying a house? When are you having children? When people graduate from college, the same thing happens: Are you going to get a graduate degree? Have you applied to jobs already? There is this great fascination in this day and age with the next thing! Whether it’s the next best thing or the next new thing, we must constantly be planning, preparing, and anticipating.

I dislike this feeling of anticipation because it makes me feel unsettled and unsatisfied, like the present is not enough, but it should be! As a student, whether you are graduating this year or not, we are always in a state of anticipation, anticipating the next quiz, test, essay, exam, graduation, application, and the list goes on. This incessant anticipation of what’s to come is exactly what stimulates anxious thoughts and feelings. We are in a constant state of planning, preparing and waiting for something to happen. Once it does happen, we fall right back into the same cycle of planning, preparing and waiting. We hardly ever get to sit back and enjoy the fact we successfully completed the task, nor do we get the chance to feel proud that we managed to complete what we sought out to do. This makes all our effort seem meaningless, because society tells us that whatever is coming next matters more. Nobody really cares what you did; they are more concerned with what you are doing next. You spend countless hours studying, reading, and practising during the many sleepless nights for four years to get your degree, and society replies, “That’s nice; what’s next?”

Even on a day-to-day basis, all we do is anticipate what’s next! When you get to work or school, you are anticipating lunchtime, and when lunchtime hits, you are anticipating getting to go home. This applies to far too many things in life, going on and on in an endless cycle of waiting for the future. I can’t tell you the amount of time I’ve wasted anticipating the weekend, the amount of times I’ve looked at the calendar and thought, “two days down, three more to go,” or the number of times my coworkers walk by me saying, “Is it Friday yet?”

The irony is that all this time is spent anticipating something, but when it finally comes around, we don’t do much with it. We don’t celebrate it, we don’t feel proud or excited about its arrival, we just start anticipating — and often, dreading — the next thing waiting for us. The truth of the matter is, though, that no matter how pointless the anticipation seems, we all do it, and we do it effortlessly. It may have something to do with hope. Hope that once we complete this project, we can get a break, or hope that once we get to Friday, the weekend will allow us to relax and unwind. Though it’s often a false sense of hope, it’s hope nonetheless.

Perhaps society needs to change its views and its framing of what is important. It should value and celebrate completion as evidence of hard work and effort. It should value taking time to feel proud of the work one has done. It should value taking time to rest and recharge before tackling the next project. Life is equally about what you have done and what you are doing next. Life is about both success and aspiration.

I hope that this semester everyone can find some time to celebrate completing the fall semester. Find time to be proud of yourselves and of all the effort you put into planning, preparing, and completing the various tasks and projects you had last year. I hope everyone takes a moment to stop anticipating what’s next, and just take in and enjoy what’s happening right now.