We
all long for the days when we think were better then today, just as
many of us long for the days when specific elements of style were
mainstream or when particular genres of music dominated the air waves,
or for the days of high school as we wished we knew then what we know
now. Are there any students that know what they have and how good they
have it? One contributor to The Fedora Chronicles says yes…
Cries of the Vintage Warrior
"The Truth of an Old Cliché"
- Opinion by Kira Schiavone-
November 16th, 2005
I’ll admit right now that “You don’t know what you have until it’s
gone” is a cliché. But clichés can be true sometimes. I
discovered today that it really is true that you don’t know what you
have until it’s gone.
My life has gone through some pretty major
upheavals: Leaving the school I grew up at, starting boarding school,
seeing a counselor for the first time, developing my first true crush,
experiencing my first battle with a teacher who didn’t know what was
typical of me. The two upheavals that I’m going to talk about actually
happened three to four months ago, so I’m experiencing a kind of
delayed shock here.
Anyway, about those old clichés… when I first
began preparing to leave my home school, I couldn’t wait to get out. It
had changed so much in those days that I could scarcely recognize it
from what it had been once. What I didn’t realize at the time was that
even with the altered state the school was in, I had never known
anything else, and I really wasn’t prepared to lose it. Instead of
cherishing those last few months, I couldn’t wait for them to be over,
for it to be summer vacation again. On the last day of school, when I
made my speech at the eighth grade moving-up ceremony, I think I
realized for a moment that I wouldn’t be coming back, and then I
started to cry during my speech. But that realization didn’t last long,
and I enjoyed our goodbye party. It was very simple and sweet, in the
exact spirit of the school. But the goodbyes were different that time,
because at the end of that summer, we wouldn’t be going back to our
familiar, pleasant little cocoon together.
Boarding school is very different. I was excited
about changing, breaking out of the familiar routine, meeting some new
people, since I had never really had to meet new people before.
It didn’t really sink in what I lost, and how much I
miss it, until just now, about half an hour ago. I’ve been having some
trouble here, and I had occasion to take down last year’s yearbook and
point out a picture in it to a friend here. It is a picture of four
girls (one of them is me, the other three are people I have known
forever) sitting around a table at lunch. It was the same table where
we would have history class that afternoon. All four of us are smiling.
We ate lunch together in that same room, at that same table, almost
every day. We were ready, then, to take on the entire world. And as we
would tell each other’s futures at lunch each day, and we always did
know who was destined for what, we had no idea that we were ignoring
the most special time of our life that was the present, and then it was
the past all too soon.
You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. So
cherish every moment of your life. And then, someday, when all the
moments are gone, you will know exactly what you had. There will always
be some regrets. But if you live each moment as best you can, and try
not to live too much in the future or the past, there will be far fewer
regrets.
Because the clichés are true. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
Kira Schiavone is a high school student who's working on becoming a
professional writer, and enjoys reading and writing rants for the
Fedora Chronicles.
Read Kira's Previous Articles...
