There is no easy way to say goodbye to something that shaped your life. There is no easy way to say hello to the next chapter of your life when you don’t know what’s coming. There is no easy way to do anything. If you can look back and say that you took the easy way out of something, can you truly say that it benefited you in the long run? Was the easy way the best option for you? The answer to those questions is probably no, because the easy way always burns out in the end. In the moment, slipping under the radar and not doing your best feels pretty good. Cheating the system and being able to say “wow that was easy”, makes you feel like a winner in the moment because you got to skip by a hard moment in your life. Everyone does it, sometimes you just need to take the easy way to relax for a second. I can say that I have taken the easy way before, but looking back I can’t say that I’m proud of it or that it made me a better person. When you’re doing the things you love and that you’re passionate about, you would never take the easy way out because when you love something you put your all into it. That’s where the problem is, everyone does everything superficially, unless it’s something they are passionate about. Going through life this way does nothing, start going through everyday life passionately. Treat every little task like it is meaningful to you, because every little task has meaning in life. 

I wish I would have learned that lesson before I finished high school. High school students are known for taking the easy way out, but the times that I went the extra mile and put my all into something – those are the moments that I remember the most. Looking back at my high school experience, I didn’t treat everything like it was meaningful because I didn’t always think it was. Sometimes high school feels meaningless and just a time that everyone has to get through, but it is so much more than that. Now that I am saying goodbye to high school, and starting my next chapter, I have some advice to current high school students, my fellow 2020 graduates, and anyone else who needs it. There is no way easy to go through life. Every little piece of life that you experience, take it by storm and live it to its fullest. There is passion to be found in every part of life, and when you look back at what you have done you want to be able to say that you did it to your fullest. 

There is no easy way.