It is amazing how any one thing that a person says, even without giving it any thought, can plant a seed in your mind that can grow and ultimately change your entire way of thinking. It can be nothing more than a fragment of a sentence, or part of an overheard conversation. It can be a quote on a bumper sticker or a headline in a newspaper. Or, it may even be something you heard on television while you were rummaging through your fridge looking for a midnight snack.

It was a night like any other. I was watching TV with my mother and my sister. That night we happened to be watching “Lost,” a sci-fi television series. I got a little hungry, so I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, leaning my head in so I could see what we had. As I was deciding between yogurt and string cheese, something that I heard one of the characters say struck me. It was something like “It always happens that you’re in a room with a person. All of those rooms add up to your life.”

I didn’t particularly stop to ponder this. It was not a sudden realization that I had, or an epiphany. It was just something that stuck with me; it gave me something to think about.

As time when on, I began to realize that I could not shake this idea. I thought about it more and more. It forced me to think about my own life and face the very obvious reality that had always been so easy to ignore. I wasn’t really living. I was just trying to get by, day by day, living as little as possible. I hated waking up at seven o’clock every morning and getting out of bed and feeling my bare feet touch the cold floor and knowing that I had the whole day ahead of me. I hated going to school and seeing all those familiar faces of people that I’ve known since kindergarten and I hated having to talk to them. I would avoid people and situations as much as possible. I just didn’t trust myself and I didn’t trust other people.

Every time something I meant to say came out wrong or I found myself avoiding a confrontation, I would excuse it by thinking or saying that it just wasn’t my day, or that I didn’t feel like dealing with it at the moment, or I just didn’t care. I would spend zero time thinking about my present life. I would only think about what my life would be like later, in the future, or I would think about things that I’ve done in the past. I would worry all the time and wonder why I couldn’t have the things that other people had.

This idea flourished in my mind, and I eventually came to realize that the future is not the only important thing, and things that I’ve done in the past do not define me. I realized that I was avoiding all these “rooms” instead of embracing them and making the best of them. I understood that I was not living fully and that although the future is important, life is too short to waste all your time thinking about it and not spending any time actually living in the present. The journey from now to the future is just as important as the future itself. Everything really does add up. I could not continue to spend my life avoiding situations and thinking that “it just wasn’t my day,” because I then I would look back years from now and be very disappointed. Because of my present, my future would suffer.

I now have a completely different outlook on life. I see the world so differently. I find that I actually enjoy talking to people and taking part in a situation. I don’t see the bad in everything like I used to. I look for opportunities to connect with people, and opportunities to feel as alive and as much in the present as possible. In attempting to make the best of the world I live in, I am a much happier person. I want to live and make my mark on the world. I don’t want to just float by like an invisible ghost.