This is a piece written by Year 11, Owen Wouldes who has been in the Creative Writing Club.

My family, for who knows how long, has owned a toy. This toy is a handheld version of one of the first truly fun games. The game was the first with a difficulty curve, Space Invaders. This heirloom was a (now exceedingly rare, to the point that even in used condition it costs $320 NZD excluding shipping) handheld version of space invaders made by Ramatex. We think it came from one of my grandfathers, as it was manufactured around the 70’s. However, cannot know for certain. My family is predisposed to dementia, so because of that and with our way of keeping things safe, we just forgot about it. We threw it in a drawer which we dragged around through several houses and several furniture positions. It always came with us, never being used, never doing its purpose. We thought this would mean it would survive forever, it was away from the wear and tear of daily use. But when we next pulled it from its stasis, it had died. Its plastic shell had worn down. It had fallen to time itself. We were not around to see it die. It didn’t die in use. It just died, in some drawer, forgotten. 

This decayed toy reminds me of one time I was walking on a beach and found the shell of a crab claw. I put it in an airtight container and, as the days went on, watched it turn to sand. Though humans and all types of biological life have a much longer lifespan than purely material objects, it is still important to remember that we still wear down. As the days pass, our joints break. Our muscles weaken and we lose our spark. Many decay without doing anything fun. We keep saying: “I can do this when I retire” “when I retire, I can have fun!” 

But we never realise that if we retire, we may not be able to do what we promised ourselves to do. We would have spent our entire lives working for a future which never existed in the first place. This realisation is what formed my life's philosophy. Don’t sacrifice your good years so you can make a retirement that may never come a small bit easier. I know I’m not the only one with this philosophy, so here’s a quote from someone who put it in a smarter way: “Nothing lasts forever, so live it up, drink it down, laugh it off, avoid the negative, take chances and never have regrets, because at one point everything you did was exactly what you wanted.” So, what's the moral of this story? Don’t push all your fun to your retirement. Don’t overwork yourself. Make time, both for yourself, and for others. It is and has always been the time to embrace joy. Embrace reasonable silliness, don't repress it. Make time for things, even if they have no purpose.  It's time to enjoy the time on earth we have; It's time to sit back, relax, and maybe play a bit of space invaders while you're at it.