With October being National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the recent fundraising efforts for cancer research hosted throughout East, we on the X-ray staff thought it would be an appropriate time to pause and reflect and be reminded.

Allow this month to be a reminder that, one, you can never know fully what someone else is going through.

And, two, life can be pretty unpredictable.

So, keeping these ideas in mind, take a moment to consider your current day-to-day.

Some of us are so busy simply navigating through the waves of life that we fail to recognize the larger purpose in our actions. If you´re the typical American high school student, you wake up at 5:00 or 6:00 am daily, catch the bus (if there is one) or drive to school, get through the 7-hour school day, tend to extracurriculars and/or homework, and go to bed.

Repeat.

It may be hard to find purpose in all of this, but it’s an incredibly secure and comforting feeling as a human being to know that you are doing something for a reason. So, as you seek to find meaning in all this, remember that your purpose doesn´t need to be some huge, revolutionary idea.

These four or so years of your life contain the time you will never get back, so maybe you conclude your current purpose is simply to live in your experience. If you struggle to find a purpose within
yourself, consider a purpose you can serve for those around you.

When we consider the notion of supporting others, we may think that to do so requires us to go out of our way for other people.

Although, in reality, something as simple as a shift in mindset can work to support the existence of those around us.

For how much we perceive the exteriors of the people around us, we often fail to consider what lies beyond the surface of a person. Sure, you can argue that this is just human nature–but, consider this: What’s stopping you from gaining a more conscious awareness of those around you?

With all this being said, take this time as an opportunity to temporarily separate yourself from your busy day at school or work or that history assignment you’ve been stressing about since last week.

And consider, “Have I lost sight of what’s important?”