What could you live without?

Homework. That’s gotta be it. Every day feels like a blur, frantically rushing to eat through endless piles of assignments, one after another over and over and over. I desperately cling to the dwindling time I have to myself, milking every second I can until the looming threat of a deadline pushes me over the edge. It’s like a never-ending battle, one of constantly fighting off the urge to turn into a vegetable on my bed. And I’m tired. I’m so tired; I think I’ve never been more tired in my life. I would sleep all day if I could—if only! The saddest part is, there isn’t even all that much. In all honesty, if I made up my mind to power through, I’d survive. But that’s never how things turn out.

When I was a kid I used to love a Korean show called “Pororo.” It was about a penguin who lived with a dinosaur on a snowy island and they’d hang out with a fox, a pink beaver, and a polar bear, all day long. I watched that stuff religiously; every episode, movie, toy, I’d be the first to hop on it. I still remember the opening line of the theme song, roughly translating to “I love playing the most.” Never had a work of literature so deeply resonated in my soul. That penguin? He was my idol. Pororo stood for everything I wanted my life to be: freedom from my parents, no responsibilities, playing till the sun set. Oh, what I’d give to live on that island. If only I’d known things wouldn’t be so simple.

https://youtu.be/E0W5sJZ2d64 My childhood.

Chasing my utopian dream, I’d begrudgingly speed through whatever little worksheet my first grade teacher handed out to get back to my wonderland. Having nothing to do was really a dream come true, and I think I lived it out to the fullest back in those years. In middle school though, that illusion unraveled and my life slowly began to change. Suddenly, I couldn’t treat work like child’s play, not without facing the consequences. I made bad habits, staying up late into the morning to get stuff done. I fell into a cycle of poor decisions, drowning in heaps of papers for days at a time. But that’s life. Flash forward to now, the toils of junior year are in full force. My perfect world is but a speck in the distance; life is work, you work to live. I can’t catch a break. Day in, day out, I’m never rested, never ready for the next item on my agenda. Sometimes I still feel like a kid, but I’ll be an adult next year? Slow down, please. Things move too quickly, life changes faster than I can keep up. 

It feels like everyone has their story of when life forces you to grow up, when you realize the blissful days of your childhood are long gone. In a way, it’s comforting. To know that what I’m feeling is a shared experience gives me hope. We’re in it together, no? But at the same time I wonder if I can stay afloat, adapt to the changing waters. To be an adult is scary. To tirelessly slave away for the rest of my life, as foolish as it is, is even scarier. As that snowy island drifts further and further away out of sight, the child in me says I could live without work.