F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "[t]he rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties and its announced end followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it."
When I was in eighth grade, Mr. G (my science teacher) got sick one Friday and we had a substitute. As I strutted into class the way eighth grade upstarts have a tendency of doing, my friend Melissa whispered, "It's the Origami Guy," and pointed to the avuncular man in Mr. G's chair. I trip-turned and thrilled at his presence. The Origami Guy was a notorious sub at my junior high because of his tendency to completely disregard lesson plans and spend bell-to-bell class hours teaching students the timeless craft of origami. Instead of continuing to work out the mathematics of model rockets, we laughed and folded away our worksheets into flap-flapping paper geese. Math for origami seemed like a fantastic trade at the time, but with this myopic substitute we failed to see the forest, as they say, for the trees; we didn't even see trees for the paper.
Mr. G's frustration made the air thick when he got back on Monday to find the plans he'd left for his class neglected under a pretty paper bird. As it turned out, the substitution of Friday's math for origami put the class off-pace for getting to build and launch our own rockets the following week. It seemed to the class on Monday we had unknowingly traded the possibility of what can really fly for what only flaps. The weekend had been born with paper and laughter flapping air and died about when we heard our rockets might never take to the sky.
Two Thursdays ago I came out of the Farmer Education Building and heard a girl tell somebody over the phone she'd been hacking through tasks and dying all week for the weekend. I stopped, thought back on my Monday-to-Thursday, and sympathized with her.
I've been there. I've held on and survived a week just to live on the weekend. I've waited for the weekend to be born so I could substitute its excitement for my own existence. I've ached for the sense of being reborn on Friday with a crisp new weekend so I could taste and feel alive.
The problem with this is simply that it isn't a fair trade. Life happens every day of the week and isn't supposed to be "gotten through." It is supposed to be lived. I may have never quite finished that math worksheet for Mr. G, but I can still see how two days for seven is hardly an equitable substitute.
Despite what some on campus may say, though, the solution to this imbalance is not to act like every day is the weekend, as if a whimsical and frivolous life could really satisfy. The answer, it seems, is big-picture vision.
Just as in my science class years ago, we've been given a fleeting allotment of time to accomplish something. It may not always be easy, pretty or fun, but it is always real. It may be easy to forget about Mr. G's plans for a while and listen to the Origami Guy when he comes around promising an hour of fun, but instant gratification is inherently shortsighted.
We shouldn't substitute silly paper birds for today's math and risk our shot at living a life lit up like rockets for an hour of cheap fun. We should be renewed with the week on Sunday and seek and find life each day, not just wait to feel the rhythm of some substitute on the weekend.
Daniel is an English literature senior and can be reached at: daniel.d.wallace@asu.edu.
