The alarm blares out into my pillow, muffling the sound just enough so my roommate doesn’t awaken to it. One, two, three, fifteen minutes and I’m up, toasting my imaginary bagel – actually I eat bread- and making coffee before my first 10am. It’s another day, just like it is for the rest.
Nothing wildly interesting permeates through the diag air. It’s more like a fog of routine and looming exams descending upon everyone, slowly. It chokes for some, for others it compresses us of our oxygen, but we are ready. We’ve seen this coming
Inescapable. Inevitable. We all knew this was coming.
Maybe it is boring
Routine lectures
Routine checking our phones in class
Routine rushed hellos
Even the biting cold is routine. But I choose to observe these supposed mundane days, weeks, semester differently. For if we continue on this trajectory of only waiting for the weekend, spring break or summer to come, we won’t learn to be grateful for the small things.
At work today, he made my day. I’m pretty sure I was knackered by terrible weather and annoying obnoxious chatter before I came to work. All he did was say thank you and easily, easily I think “maybe not such a bad day after all”.
All I did was be polite and gave my best customer service by saying “You passed and you’re all set”.
Thank you stranger taking Gateway, for wearing your kindness with you into East Hall. For saying “thank you” as if I had a huge role in helping you attain that pass after 10 tries. I saw relief written on your forehead and you wore it like a winner.
These mundane days are extraordinary for its mundane-ness. The usual crowd that floods into the diag, hurriedly rushing to the next back-to-back. For regular squirrels that peek out here and there. For the condensation on my windows, sustaining my plants I’ve never watered since September.
Somehow they’re still alive.
(Rushed Hellos by Sarah Shu)
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