I’ve never liked math very much. And one day, when I was bathing in my hatred for math…I got caught up on numbers. You know 1,2,3,4….so on. I was thinking of all the numbers I have. I currently have 17 years. About five feet and inches of height. I have ten 8 good friends, I have 1 brother, I have 1 car with four wheels.

Isn’t that boring? Isn’t that possibly the worst description of a person you have heard? Numbers really don’t say that much. Me, as a person, I am not defined by my numbers.

But I believe that there are probably a lot of people who have yet to reach this realization. I know a lot of my classmates will define themselves with their grade point number, their ACT score, which let me tell you, is a very frustrating number, the number on a stopwatch after a race, the number of points on a scoreboard.

And as we grow up, we will define ourselves by the number in our bank account, how many friends we have, the number of inches our waists will grow by.

Personally, I think that is very sad. I hope when we become adults we don’t measure ourselves by the number in our bank accounts, but rather the trips we take and the number of kids we have. I hope we don’t count our friends, but instead, count the good things they do for us. I hope I don’t put my confidence in something as silly as a number on a pair of pants.

I know this I speak of future is far away. But, I also remember when high school felt far away, and when graduation felt even farther. And even though I’m bad at math…I know one thing about numbers. They trick you. They make you think you have days and weeks and months; when, in reality, we only have now. I do not think our lives should be defined by times on a stopwatch, or points on a board, or test scores. I think our high school years should instead be remembered by the number of lessons we learned, the time signature on our marching band music, the lengths of the laughs we shared with our friends.

That is what we should define our young selves as…the lessons, the music, the laughs. That is what we should remember. So that way, when we look back, we don’t count four years…we just know that the four years counted.