Finally, the snow is gone, Spring Break is behind us, and the shorts have been put in the drawer where the ugly sweaters once were. If you’ve been anxious for spring like I have, the end of March is one of your favorite times in the year. Not because the trees have leaves and you can get a great tan, but because green is beginning to poke up through the brown earth and the temperature is conducive to nature walks and bare forearms.

I’m so excited to walk out of my room and not curse the cold breeze; I don’t know what I’ll do first. This is a sign of hope and joy, but also a problem for those of us who stop and think about their lives every now and then. I am so ecstatic about all the things I can do. But I wonder: which should I do? If I could do everything, believe me I would, but there are not enough hours in the day to both take that long jog along the river and still manage to be on top of all the other daily chores.

My quandary is this: how do we make the most of things? Meaning is something we seek; we want our lives to be valuable. What’s the right balance of pleasures and duties, vices and virtues, so that at the end of the day we feel satisfied? How much of this lovely spring weather can we enjoy before other parts of our lives start hurting?

I know there are some among us who see the change of season like the changing of the hours or days: it comes as would a change in wallpaper on a desktop screen: welcome, but roughly inconsequential beyond the daily tedium. Sometimes I envy these people who can live so separately from nature that they do not feel the beckoning of the sun’s rays and the scent of blooming flowers, but then I remember the joy these things bring me when do I have them, and it balances out the gloom of gazing at a cold earth for four months of the year.

This means that we all must find our own balance in this new season. I love to live by the old saying: “All things in moderation.” In ways, it’s a stoic reminder, but I also like to see it justifying the sometimes outrageous and spontaneous activities I take part in. Those moments, where I let life fling me around like the end of a whip, are the least moderate activities by definition, but I also like to think doing something completely novel helps shake the dust off our souls.

One thing I’m really looking forward to is smelling the lilac blossoms during finals week. I cannot wait for the day when tanning takes precedence over tidying and doing a sketch of the view from Old Main seems enough like homework to justify not doing other, more literal kinds of homework.

All my wishes won’t make homework or finals go away, and we have our problem again.  If there’s anything that can be drawn from all of this, it might be that doing what we enjoy has real tangible value, but it has to remain within the context of our broader selves.

For someone like me, that means doing things in the moment and picking the moments I really enjoy to anticipate and savor. If you do not hear the call of the wild, your life might be a little different than mine. For the rest of us, remember that you’ve been cooped up indoors for months, and your spirit urges to fly on the fresh spring air; even moderation should be had in moderation.