Priorities Change

In the womb, we have no priorities. We swim in a warm, safe lagoon, and dream endlessly. There are no choices to be made, no fears and no worries. We are calm, sometimes active, but mostly still beings. We are as complex as the universe, yet have no real purpose, no priorities. But the moment we enter the world, everything changes.

At birth, our first priority is to breathe. Survival is the paramount objective and each wailing gasp we take ensures us at least one more moment of life. Eventually, we’d like to eat. But still, nothing is more important than our exhale and inhale. Our lives are measured by our tiny snores and yawns, and we babble happily as we enjoy the feeling of air filling our once still lungs. We cannot fully control our bodies yet, but each day is an exciting possibility.

As a toddler, we want to experience everything. Our priority is simply to collect as much information as we can using our five senses. The world is large and scary but we want to explore all of it. We are enthralled with this newfound freedom of movement and learning, and we cry when we can’t communicate this properly to our caretakers.

As pre-teens, we struggle. On the cusp of our teenage, we totter between trying to grow up and trying to stay young. Our priorities are friends, sports, music... and as our bodies begin to change, we see our fellow humans in a whole new light. Caught between child and adult we try to find meaning in our lives while battling hormone surges and the emergence of acne.

As teens, we are messes. Early teenage years are acne and fitting in, late teens are applying to college, first jobs, and grades. Everything becomes more real. Perhaps we’ve experimented with relationships, perhaps we haven’t. Every journey is different but the conflicting emotions are still the same. No more play time, on to the real world. Yet it’s not the real world yet. As hard and stressful as high school can be, it’s nothing compared to real life. It pales in comparison to the late night and hardship and work that comes with each successive level of adulthood.

College. Where the rubber meets the cold hard road. Our priorities are so scattered we barely know what to care about. It’s grades and parties and studying and homesickness. Where we once played with dolls and trucks, we play with alcohol and less clothes. It’s confusing and liberating all at the same time. And yet we still look to be adults.

Adulthood is not all it’s cracked up to be. There are bills to be paid and real responsibilities to be handled. We become caught up in jobs, in starting our own new families, in waiting to retire. Less pleases us, and priorities are unique. To be an adult is wonderful and glorious but also miserable and work. It’s cold coffee and long days, sunshine and sorrow. We all lead very different lives yet are all connected in our struggles.

But death, that is the great unifier. While in life we diverge down many paths, our priorities like grains of sand in the beach of humanity, in death we are all the same. We just want to breathe. We have assumed the priority that we had when we arrived into this world for the first time. We just want to breathe.

Therefore, I think it is important that we take time out of our days to remember to do just that, to breathe. We cannot see the future, and the past is unchanging, but breath is life. And while our many priorities continue to profligate and consume us, we need to not forget our most important one: breathing.