Balance and Gratitude: A Reminder to Find Your Yellow Everyday
November 28, 2024
Writer: Maisy Seckler
Editors: Dani Eder & Kate Shapiro
Photo: Pinterest
Thanksgiving is a holiday that promotes gratitude, but I think this near-week break should serve as a reminder to practice thankfulness all-year long. Now that Cornell students have stuffed their duffle bags, boarded buses and flights, and traversed on the long journey home for Thanksgiving break, we are experiencing an opportunity for critical and necessary introspection.
It is the cultural norm here at Cornell, as I’m sure it is as other Ivy Leagues and top universities, to give 150% effort, 100% of the time. While no one is explicitly enforcing this upon us, telling us we need to be the best, it is ingrained in the social matrix that we behave this way.
The professional clubs and fraternities on campus run a grueling application process, with multiple resume reviews, coffee chats, interviews, and behavioral analyses. After all of that, accepted students are met with an even more challenging initiation period that shackles new members to the case study briefs in the Library until 3 am almost every single night.
On the other hand, the Cornell social scene and Greek Life community is as vibrant and exciting, as it is overwhelming and exhausting. Each weekend there are numerous events happening with swathes of people, and sometimes an unwarranted and unwanted pressure to be extroverted settles in your chest— you feel forced to participate.
Of course, the coursework here is demanding and difficult. Cornell is the #1 university in New York state, and the 11th best university in the nation, so it is expected that we read onerous material, think critically, and engage in hard-to-have conversation with one another. It is all too common for us to get caught up in the pursuit of an A+, that we let our classes become sources of extreme stress and anxiety, sometimes taking over our lives.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, I urge you to prioritize balance in your life; balance between solitude and friendship, between work and play, and between movement and rest. It’s okay to approach life through a sense of ease and equanimity, in fact, that may even create more moments of success and celebration in our life.
Why concentrate gratitude into a one week practice, when it can be diffused throughout the year? Perhaps, if we harbor more gratitude on a day to day basis, our extracurricular commitments, academic responsibilities, and social lives will become less intense. Remaining present and constantly seeking the silver lining creates more space for positivity and “yellow-ness” in our lives, which is always needed and welcomed.
