Why I Hate One Second Everyday

In the second semester of my Sophomore year, my high school initiated a program called “Senior Talks”. The goal of the project was to direct the cockiness of each year’s senior class into something that could be beneficial for the whole school. Once a week, a designated 12th grade student would get up in front of the school and impart some earth shattering wisdom onto the eager ears of their 9th-11th grade peers. Nine times out of ten their groundbreaking advice would be scribbled on their hands a few seconds before their speech and would often end on the ever original note of “don’t waste your time partying” or “live these years to the fullest.” This weekly cycle continued until the middle of my Junior year. Until that day, the most valuable pieces of advice I’d received from my esteemed elders was how to break into the school when absolutely necessary and to never eat a Ghost Pepper no matter how many times you’re dared. So as the next senior approached the shtender, you could say my expectations weren’t too high.

His topic wasn’t revolutionary-live every moment to the fullest-and I was settling in for a power nap to give me the energy to sleep through my next four classes before lunch. But soon the room got quiet and everyone directed their attention to the projector at the back of the room-I perked up, shocked at the change in pace. For the next minute and a half my eyes were glued to the screen as the events of his summer ticked by, second by second, compressing the full three months into a 90-second clip. This was my first introduction to the app, One Second Everyday. For the duration of his speech I was hooked, sure that this was the motivation I needed to do something substantial. As I thought back on what I had accomplished in my three and a half years of high school, the only quantitative feat I could think of was the hundreds of movies I’d crossed off my bucket list. A success like that wouldn’t make a very impressive film and, like most things worthy of my attention at age sixteen, I soon forgot about the app that changed my worldview.

This past September this memory came crashing down on me harder than my anxieties about the upcoming year abroad. I was leaving to Israel in five days for the year and suddenly my social worries that I had fixated on for hours seemed so petty. I was overtaken by a much more imminent fear; that this year in Israel would be the same as the past eighteen years of my life-filled to the brim with the most unmemorable memories. This realization marked the first remarkable second of the last three months. I grabbed my phone and downloaded the app I had learned about so many months before. From that moment onward, I vowed to make every second movie worthy.

I expected the adventures to fall in my lap, sure that every minute in Israel would leave me with something to film. This, as I should have known, was not the case. Capturing a day in one second is a much harder task than I was initially willing to undertake. Seminary is drawn-out and exhausting and most nights I wish I could lay in bed and revert back to my Netflix days. But the daunting venture of my new app gives me no time off. I was always the girl who dreamed big, but when the going got tough, I rarely got going. I was far too content riding in the middle of the road, doing just enough to do what needed to get done. I hate One Second Everyday because it refuses to let me coast through life, to sit on the sidelines and exert as little effort as possible. I hate One Second Everyday because it forces me to break out of my comfort zone and seek out the thrills of this experience. I hate One Second Everyday because it drove me out of the easy routine I was so comfortable with, and for this I can’t thank the app enough.