The American Nightmare

“Man, someday I’m gonna ditch this small town for Bali. I'll be sipping on my piña colada in my luxurious house with a beautiful woman, and an even more beautiful car.” I told my friend that over some soggy pizza at the eighth grade lunch table. I’ll admit it was a crude joke and an immature dream, but in my defense I was fourteen. At that age I mostly just absorbed information and opinions from the people I looked up to. 

The person I looked up to the most was probably my sister. She was a winner or at least she desperately wanted to be. She must have joined every academic extracurricular she could all the while still achieving her perfect grades. Now like I said, I just sort of absorbed other peoples views so when it came to looking up to my sister I too wanted to be a winner. Throughout middle school I didn’t play any sports, and I valued grades and intelligence over my own happiness. I suppose I just assumed if I did well enough in school then I could just be happy later in life, after I got a comfortable job and plenty of money. The real American dream, am I right. Anyways looking back I think it worked counterintuitively because all that academic excellency really stressed me out and I started to despise my schoolwork. It also didn’t help that my parents just loved it when my sister and I brought home awards and As. The love and validation definitely made it more difficult for me to realize it wasn’t adding up.

So fast forward to the following summer, and I really wanted to make some money. I was looking into places I could work but it was a pretty short list. My parents still worked all summer so they didn’t have time to drive me anywhere, I needed a place near home. That's when I heard from my life long friend and neighbor that her grandpa could use some help. He is retired but he likes to spend his time down our road at his orchard.  As he has been getting older, it's become more difficult for him to do a lot of the heavy lifting required to plant and maintain a young fruit tree orchard. So whenever he gave me a call I would go down the road and do a job for him. The pay wasn’t great, but I guess that's because I was a fourteen year old and honestly it never really bothered me. The jobs ranged from digging a few dozen holes to painting some piping, but all the while I worked he would tell me interesting stories and give me advice he wished he knew when he was my age. The stories were entertaining and I’m sure that the advice will pay off some day but truly my favorite part of working down in that orchard was the scenery. The orchard sits in a nook surrounded by beautiful mountainous bluffs with sharp limestone cliffs and a dense temperate forest layering it with color and texture. There's a creek winding its way through the valley too, it snakes like a childs toy train through the orchard and every so often you can catch a trout splashing its way up stream. Fish aren’t the only animals though my favorite are probably the birds with a million beautiful songs all ringing in harmony. It really is one of my favorite places to be. 

After working in that orchard and listening to grandpa's words, I really started to wonder if the point of life is to work until you can’t and then simply just live with what you get. I started viewing things a little differently as I went about my day, looking for the beauty in everything, trying to find some joy in small gestures and my mental health. My overall happiness really improved. 

Come ninth grade, it's my first year in highschool and I’m excited. There are many more opportunities for me now that I’m older I signed up for a lot. I was planning on doing less but I just couldn’t break my old habits and expectations. So I dug in deep with Wednesday being the only day of the week that I didn’t have something after school. I struggled to keep my grades up and I fell back into the old stress. I couldn’t even find time to clean my room or indulge in any of my hobbies. It wasn’t about me or my career, it was about the grades and commitments I had made by signing up for those activities. Now going into the summer after my first year of highschool I don’t know much and I’m still making crude jokes over lunch but I know that it isn’t about the destination. I finally learned from an overwhelming freshman year that life is a journey and I intend to enjoy it.