If you’ve met me and have gotten to know me through segments in time, you’ve come to notice that I am very much a ‘workaholic’.
I work hard all the time; almost too much to even let myself breathe at times. I am constantly trying to improve my work or my actions.
“She’s always at the library, typing away,” they say.
“I don’t want to disturb her because she looks so focused,” one whispers to another.
Sometimes, people do come up and ask what I’m working so hard on. I always reply with simple academic or intellectually reasoned answers that relate to me and my major. But really, I work for those that come after me.
As an overwhelmed, lonely soul living in a pandemic, the only thing I can do besides work my butt off is to hope for better lives for those souls yet to come. I allot two seconds a day to feel sorry for myself, but then as soon as those seconds end, I am back to the grind. That grind is not to finish my major or to get a job once I graduate.
It’s to leave here and enter the world with enough knowledge to help make the world easier for those yet to enter it.
Yes, I know that it is a huge task. You’ll try to tell me to slow down and take a break. But all the other times that you’ve told me that didn’t work, so why should I stop now?
Things really suck right now. I really don’t want future generations to endure the pains that I’ve had to go through. I want to make things better for them because I’ve heard so many complaints about our world today. It’s like a jabber jay, chatting away repeatedly about something awful that they just saw on social media or heard at Starbucks. It’s catchy, so it sticks in my mind, reminding me constantly that I have the power to change things for the greater good of the future.
That’s why I work so hard. Sure, it might have the image of environmental improvement in the oceans and the ozone with the stamp of my diploma. But it has a deeper reflection showing a dream. The dream is without masks, without bickering politicians that stumble over each other’s words, without weekly updates about corruption and secrets and without constant struggle.
I have hope for this dream, no matter how impossible it might seem. I work for those that come after me so they can have a shot at the dream that I may never seem become a reality.
