The Feeling That Life Will Never Be As Good As It Once Was

this video is sponsored by Skillshare the first 1000 people to use the link in the description or receive two free months of skill shares Premium Membership a young girl named Sarah got ready for her first day of fifth grade she was at a new school in a new town after having moved over the summer naturally she was scared and nervous about what it would be like and if she would be liked before leaving for school she sat at the kitchen table enjoying her favorite cartoon and eating her favorite cereal about two hours later she was at school lost and nervous as the first school day turned into the first school week first month and first half of the year Sarah remained fairly nervous each day every day felt like a minefield of social games in classrooms dresses she worried about boys and she worried about the popular girls that weren't very friendly to her she wasn't bullied per se but she often felt inferior and uncomfortable at about halfway through the year though Sarah had found a nice little friend group of other kids dealing with the same things which helped one of the few things that helped her get through each week after morning cartoons in serial was recessed with their friends they wouldn't need to do too much just hang out joke freely swing on the swings and flirt with each other the whole world became an elementary school playground as everything else dissolved outside the fence of the schoolyard every Monday Sarah had a math test after recess though which always kind of ruined the day for her she struggled with math and always felt stupid during the tests every Wednesday and Friday she also had to give presentations into classes which he also hated just in general she felt more stressed that year than any previous school year and every day was sort of an uphill battle one day after a math test Sarah left class to go get a drink of water on her way to the water fountain she noticed a second or third grader crying in the hallway with a guidance counselor the counselor was saying it's okay it's just a game it's just a game over and over as Sarah walked past them she thought to herself how little kids have no idea how good they have it six years later Sarah was 16 and a junior in high school it had been one of her hardest school years yet she struggled to keep her grades up and felt the pressure of needing to more than ever for the first time she started looking at colleges and having to think about her life after school all of it terrified and stressed her out that same year Sarah got her license and could essentially go wherever she wanted she had to schedule around when her older brother was using the family's second car though which meant her and her brother fought over it nearly every time when she did get to use it though Sarah and her friends would go out and enjoy the new sense of freedom that came with being that age they would go to the park the mall parties each other's houses and sometimes just drive around and smoke weed and get food most of the time it was really fun but a lot of the times Sarah felt a weird increasing amount of competitiveness with her friends especially when boys were around one boy in particular who Sarah liked a lot ended up making out with one of her friends while they were at the mall together of course this devastated Sarah and she rushed off and sat in the food court by herself trying not to cry while she waited for her mom to come pick her up so to avoid going home with her friends while she sat there thinking about how horrible the year had been with all the stresses of school and new responsibilities and increasing social challenges a group of three little girls who looked to be around fifth or sixth grade walked by her and sat at a table just a couple feet away Sarah overheard them complaining about a teacher or something and she condescendingly laughed to herself she thought about how they had no idea how easy they had it simultaneously she was suddenly reminded of her own elementary in middle school years she remembered how easy and fun it was to be at an age when you still had things like recess just hanging out flirting with boys with no real pressure and no real life stresses other than silly little tests and other dumb little kids she got visuals in her head of her 5th and 6th grade classrooms and hallways and so on recalling various specific memories that she had forgotten about but we're now suddenly being played out of the strange storage center of the brain like blurry little movies in that moment she felt a longing to be back there eight more years went by Sara was 24 living in New York City after going to college in Syracuse New York several hundred miles away from home she decided to stay in New York after graduating and moved to the city for work she was living in an apartment that she split with four other people it was tight quarters but the group had sort of become like a little family and something was always going on in the apartment the whole group would sometimes go to the bars and clubs together bringing their other friend groups all into one big one however a good percentage of the time most of her friends and roommates were busy tired or uninterested in going out all with their own lives relationships job schedules and so on during this time despite living with four people sara constantly felt lonely it had been three years since she broke up with the guy she dated seriously in college she broke up with him because he drank all the time and was an [ __ ] when he did but she still wasn't really over him and she definitely wasn't over being alone for work during this time Sarah was a typesetter for a midsize publishing company helping create text layouts for business oriented books and print publications the job was both tedious and stressful the pressure of the work environment paired with her lack of personal connection to the outcome made it meaninglessly difficult she loved living in New York City though and her options were limited in order to afford the nearly impossible cost to stay in order to try and increase her income ever since graduating college she had been trying to build up her own graphic design business on the side which he put most of her spare time towards she was always looking for freelance projects and working on personal portfolio pieces but she had yet to find any sort of success she worried deeply about the direction of her life or lack thereof and felt aimless incapable and afraid of never finding success in anything personally meaningful the unknown and uncertainty not at her like a cramped muscle in her spine one night on a fairly ordinary Saturday Sara drank wine by herself in her apartment while working on a graphic design piece a couple hours in she was properly drunk while looking for source material and old files she ended up looking through old photos on her laptop specifically photos of her and her ex-boyfriend in college this then led her to look at other old photos and videos from college in high school parties projects travels dorms her winter and summer breaks videos that her friends made at sleepovers and so on she thought about how fun college was and how easy high school was to have friends that weren't always busy and to have fun just driving around and going to the mall to not have to worry about real money problems to have summers that still felt like summers to have semesters that ended and began to just be a student with nothing that's serious on their plate and to still have a boyfriend who made her loneliness feel less real in this moment Sarah felt a deep nostalgic longing to be back in the time of the photos 21 years went by sarah was 44 and had since become a wife a successful independent graphic designer and a mother of two boys when she was 36 one of her designs that she posted on the Internet got noticed by the founder of a start-up tech company the founder liked it so much she reached out and asked Sarah if the company could purchase an iteration of the design and use it as their logo Sarah of course agreed and two years later after the company had become a massive success she was given the opportunity to lead the company's brand identity icon designs and nearly all other visual elements ever since Sarah slowly became a highly sought after world-renowned graphic designer eventually starting her own studio and design consulting agency partnering with several other industry leaders between this and her two children almost every week was filled to maximum capacity there was never a dull moment which was engaging but there was never a dull moment which was also absolutely exhausting she appreciated her job and loved her family but Sarah often found herself feeling suffocated by her life not just by the intense stress pressure or responsibility of everything but by the feeling that all possibilities for anything else were essentially gone forever on one Friday Sarah picked up her youngest son from baseball practice in between two of her afternoon meetings on the way back to the office Sarah stopped for a drink at a local bar to give herself a moment to breathe she had two more meetings that day and then a seminar presentation that night along with two more big presentations over the weekend this was a lot but normal for her while at the bar a small group of 20 or 30 something year olds came in and sat they were talking about what sounded like a business they were working on or towards Sarah listen while she drank she looked over out of the corner of her eyes and thought about how nice it would be to be that age again to still have a friend group like that to be able to go out once or twice a weekend with no worries or even just be able to stay in by herself and drink wine relax and work on her own projects with no distractions so you remember the times when she was first living in the city the shitty apartments that she loved the roommates that were always around to have fun the nights out being young and single she thought back to how exciting it was to be in the face of the unknown everything in her life now was mostly figured out and now she longed to be back when nothing was figured out and everything was still possible she thought to herself almost slightly mad at the naive young adults next to her that 20 year olds never realized how good they have it the last 40 years went by Sarah was 84 she had developed moderate osteoporosis which had begun to somewhat limit her mobility with all likeliness of worsening she lived in an assisted living center for elderly with memory and mobility issues on a normal Sunday her 16 year old granddaughter Olivia visited her Sarah and her granddaughter were very close and Olivia would often visit to talk keep her company and ask her for advice on this particular day the two watched a movie together it was a sad movie where someone died really young from cancer when the movie was over the two cried a little while they talked about it at one point while talking about life and aging Olivia asked Sarah if she regretted anything Sarah thought for a moment about how honest she wanted to be with Olivia then she answered and said that one of the things she regretted is that she never realized how good she had it until it was too late until she was this frail old woman alone in an assisted living home with nothing to do she said that she would give anything to be back any age younger than 70 not even to do anything different but to just do it again to be 45 again and be passionate and engaged in a job she thrived in to still be a wife and a mother of little children to still be front and center of the orchestra of her life Sarah ended with saying something along the lines of don't overlook what you have while you have it Olivia you don't realize how good it is to be where you are until you aren't and you don't realize how young you are until you realize you were just young for the last time ever don't wait until you're my age it's no fun after asking a few more questions the two said goodbye with the hug and Olivia went home leaving Sarah alone in her room before turning the TV back on Sarah thought about her own advice for a moment she wasn't sure if she meant what she said or if it was more of just what she thought she was supposed to say if she was in a movie or a story or something she thought about how she was essentially saying that life comes down to being this old and everything before it was good and everything after it is basically the run off but then this made her think about how even there she wasn't listening to her own advice she considered that in that moment she was in fact existing in but another period of her life that if she lived longer she would almost certainly look back fondly on that if in 10 years she was still alive but completely bedridden or beginning to lose her mind she would look back at this time when she still had a body and brain that worked a time when she had essentially nothing to worry about other than what activity she wanted to do at the home a time when her kids and grandkids visited her and she still knew who they were this then made Sara question how she looked at her whole life during each moment she always knew that she looked at the past through rose-colored glasses she knew everyone did and that this was just a cliche written into the script of life but she never really thought about what this meant about the present that if seemingly every version of the past could be viewed through the positive color of rose then that same shade of Rose must exist in every moment in period of life including this one and that perhaps the problem is roses just one shade of many colors that coat every moment at the same time and when you mix multiple primary and complementary colors together you get a brownish or grayish color and when you see a brown or gray it's essentially impossible to see the other shades of colors that help make it she realized in this that even in the mostly positive rose-colored moments of life it didn't take much green or yellow to make everything look Brown and when reflecting back she didn't see the other colors of anxiety or stress not because they didn't exist but because the stressful confusing and overwhelming parts of her memories weren't so stressful confusing or overwhelming anymore now that she knew how they were all resolved or no longer relevant the complementary colors dissolved away and left the primary memory in and of itself free from all the moods that painted over the experience while she was experiencing it but the Rose was always there somewhere and in this moment Sarah finally saw it while she was in it this video was sponsored by Skillshare if you aren't familiar Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of easy to follow professionally made classes covering dozens of creative and entrepreneurial subjects like writing film fine arts web development business analytics and much more whether you want to learn a new skill further develop an existing one or inspire new ways of thinking and approaching your life or career Skillshare has a uniquely curated in diverse collection of online classes for just about anyone at any level specifically if writing is at all of interest one grade class available on Skillshare is entitled autobiographical fiction write a short story from personal experience in which the class teacher Adam Janos provides fantastic insight on how to draw from real personal experiences in memories while harnessing the flexible nature of fiction to better express and create rich self reflective writing in general no matter what the class skills platform is tailored to the learning process with various projects exercises and resources associated with certain classes and a communal component that allows for helpful discussions in the sharing of work with an annual subscription access the skill shares constantly growing library is less than ten dollars a month and because skill share is sponsoring this video the first 1,000 people to click the link in the description will receive a two month free trial of skill shares Premium Membership of course thanks so much for watching in general and see you next video [Music]

Channel: Pursuit of Wonder

Views: 972,066

Keywords: short story, short film, animation, nostalgia, what is nostalgia, nostalgic, wanting the past, longing, philosophy, exurb1a, pursuit of wonder, school of life, in a nutshell, alan watts, dictionary of obscure sorrows, happy, happiness, how to be, what is, what to do, why do i

Id: mgf9ClNgvGI

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020