At some point in our lives, we’ve all probably heard someone compare life to the performing arts. Shakespeare told us, “All the world’s a stage,” and numerous musicians, from Patrick Park to Teddy Pendergrass, have crooned “life is a song worth singing.”
Regardless of the discipline, performing arts and life share a key similarity: Both provide a limited amount of time, a determined number of notes, words or scenes that we try to live out to the best of our ability. We can always try to extend our performances, but at some point we’ll all reach our last note. No one lives forever.
Of course, life doesn’t provide us with sheet music, so we rarely know when our final notes will come. We usually don’t anticipate our deaths, but if we could see exactly how many minutes we had left and the precise number of notes remaining in the music of our lives, how would this knowledge affect the way we played the song? Would we try to cram in as many additional notes as possible before we finished the piece? Would we play louder? Would we drag it out? I believe that in almost every case, such knowledge would negatively impact the way we live.
If I knew how many hours I had left to live, I would probably try to cram as much content as possible into my remaining time. Like Morgan Freeman’s character Carter Chambers, I would form a bucket list and try to use every waking minute to impact the world. If anything delayed my plans, I would feel guilty for wasting those precious hours.
I haven’t conducted any studies on this subject, but after several conversations with friends, I believe that most students at Pepperdine would also feel this pressure. We’re a school of achievers, and if any of my classmates knew how much time he or she had left, this person would probably feel obligated to invest it for as large a return as possible. If each student in the symphony of life at Pepperdine knew when his or her song would end, I would expect them all to add as many extra notes as possible, trying to pack their final moments with meaning.
Although few of us know when we will die, almost everyone at Pepperdine can anticipate when they’ll graduate. Instead of counting our days left on earth, we count the days left at school and feel a similar pressure to make each minute count. This awareness may explain why many Pepperdine students overcommit themselves: We want friendships, work experience, good grades and better memories, so we continue adding activities to our schedules. Many students here will take on at least three high-commitment extracurricular activities in addition to their fulltime academic schedule.
Unfortunately, quantity of notes rarely improves the quality of music and numerous activities won’t improve the quality of life. In a 2008 study conducted by the Associated Press, four in 10 college students reported that they felt stress often, and nearly one in five admitted that they feel stressed almost constantly. According to Pepperdine’s Counseling Center, about 34 percent of Pepperdine students report that stress negatively impacts their academic performance, a number about six percentage points above the national average. While the students never made a direct connection between stress and over commitment, I believe many Pepperdine students would agree that over commitment significantly increases their stress.
Ironically, by overcommitting, we actually make ourselves less effective in our education, in our work, and in our relationships. The University of Texas’ Counseling and Mental Health Center warns that stress can “decrease interpersonal and academic effectiveness” by reducing self-esteem, lowering self-control and increasing fatigue. This weariness and corresponding lack of focus make it even more difficult to accomplish the legion of to-do list items on most students’ schedules.
We do ourselves a disfavor when we strain to squeeze every drop of productivity out of our years at Pepperdine. Like a musician adding extra notes to an otherwise beautiful song, we throw off the balance of our lives when we spend our days scrambling from one activity to another. So, here’s my proposition: don’t place your worth in the activities in which you participate at Pepperdine. Pick a few that you enjoy, and invest yourself in these activities to the best of your ability. Instead of adding notes to your life’s song, turn your eyes to the music already set before you, and savor playing each note in its time.
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