“All things in moderation, including moderation.”
Over the years my dad has told me this more times than I can remember. And given my vast array of goals and pursuits, that simple phrase has reverberated in my mind, and it’s currently helping me navigate the college life.
Between the rigorous academic courseload, athletics, my writing pursuits, and other activities and endeavors, there are a lot of things vying for my time at any particular moment. As mentioned in a previous post, time management has helped immensely with regards to fitting it all in, but the words my dad says have dictated what I plan to spend time on, and when and how long I’ll do so.
Quite simply, there are times when a daily moderation of all my activities is good and necessary. But there are other times, such as this upcoming week, when they aren’t. When dealing with midterms and an extreme streak of creative writing success, I’m going to spend more time on these activities and less on others. The same goes for finals week, or a week with an intense basketball schedule. Remember “all things in moderation, including moderation.”
That’s really all there is to it. It’s a simple concept, but one that I believe many people fail to grasp. It simply isn’t necessary, or good even, to try to accomplish all of one’s endeavors, in spite of their constantly fluctuating activity levels, on a daily basis. There are some days, weeks, and months even were you shouldn’t try to balance it all, and rather cut back on some things. It’s similar to a diet. You moderate your calorie intake, as well as the types of food you eat, on a daily basis, consistently. But every diet has “cheat days,” where this moderation is thrown out the window. Another example is a workout program. Despite moderating yourself to adhere to the program on a daily basis, the program itself requires that you take off days.
“All things in moderation, including moderation.” This phrase doesn’t just apply to the life of new adults like myself. It applies to every person, regardless of age, background, or anything else. You might agree with me, you might not, but in my experience the phrase has been nothing but beneficial. So for the rest of my life, I’m going to continue to adhere to these words of wisdom…in moderation of course.
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