It feels so good.

Finished my last final (Math 30C) about an hour ago.

Graduation Viewpoints

Graduation is in two weeks. I think it’s weird how people have such different viewpoints on the same affair. In my class of about 40 people, I’ve seen two major perspectives:

1. “Thank God school is almost over. I want to get out of here and never come back. I’m so sick of school.”

Above is a very common phrase I hear in the hallways. It seems to me that people bottle up all their hatred and contempt for school, then choose to release it only during the last couple months of Grade 12. People that I’ve gone to school with for 12 years that have been normally happy and content have suddenly grown horribly opposed to school, and have the urge to leave and enter the ‘real world’ as soon as physically possible. Whether that’s actually what they feel like, or if it’s just a kind of a ‘mask’ that they put on to make themselves seem more mature and adult-like, I don’t know.

2. “Awuh! I don’t want to leave! I want to be with you guys forever! Let’s all fail so we can stay together!”

This phrase isn’t heard as often as #1, but it’s definitely still present. Spoken by those who have a hard time coping with change, and would like nothing more than to keep doing what they’re doing for the rest of their life, even if it’s Math C30 and Calculus. I’m not sure if their desire is to stay with all their classmates, or if they simply don’t want to deal with life outside of High School.

—

Those are the two most widely expressed opinions that I’m aware of. As for myself, I don’t think I would put myself in either of those two categories. I think that I’m glad that High School is almost over, because I’m looking forward to University and studying something I actually enjoy (Computer Science). However, at the same time, I’m friends with pretty much every single person in my class, and once school is finished, everyone is going different directions. I just doesn’t seem fair that you spend 12 years of your life making friends and building relationships, then once Grade 12 is over you never see the majority of those people again. I think it’s this fact that I have so much trouble coping with.

Thank God for the miracle of technology, and thank the series of tubes for the invention of Facebook. It sure is a hell of a lot easier to keep in touch via Internet compared to snail mail.

Grad Quote

I’ve finally chosen a Graduation quote.

I say finally, because picking one has been a long, horribly paved road I’ve traveled down. This quote is the one that they will read right after my name as I walk into the hall and onto the stage, therefore this is the quote that people will associate not only my name with, but my person as well. For example, if my grad quote would have been ‘White power.”, it would be assumed by hundreds of audience members that I am an active member of the KKK and believe that Caucasian is the greater race. I think it’s obvious why that wouldn’t be a very wise choice as far as quotes go, but you can see how people judge you. This is the reason why it took me so long to find a suitable one.

I went through quite a few before I found ‘the one’. There were a couple different ones by Douglas Adams that I enjoyed, and a few others from other honorary figureheads. However, none of them really seemed to fit. They were all either way too deep and serious, or they were meant to be funny and stupid. It reminded me briefly of the song Bicycle Race by Queen :

“I don’t want to be a candidate for Vienam or Watergate, ‘cuz all I want to do is BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE…”

That expresses my feelings toward the choosing of my quote. I don’t want something that turns me into a philosopher or world leader. All I want is something easy-going and laid back. So, with that song stuck in my head, I got to work browsing pages upon pages of quotes, along with several different tags, but all returned little to no quality results.

Finally, I became bored of reading quotes and pointed my browser to Youtube. This is what I watched:

After the video was done, I had made up my mind. Monty Python, in all their brilliance and comedic wizardry, revealed to me the perfect grad quote. Light, optimistic, and funny (for those who are familiar with the comedy group); just what I was looking for. Those who get it will laugh, those who don’t will appreciate the simplicity, and those who are old and deaf will smile and nod in the knowledgeable sort of way that old deaf people like to nod.

Something Everyone Should See

In my opinion, there are too many people on this earth that think that the whole Universe revolves around them. I’m not trying to be mean or rude, but it’s the truth. It’s human nature to think that everything around us was indeed, made just for us. There’s an image that I think everyone on this Earth should see, and should really, really think about. Here it is:

That dot, that minuscule pixel in the image, is earth.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” ~ Carl Sagan

Just reading Sagan’s words blows my mind. Here we are, sitting on this massive chunk of rock, and we think that we run the show. I think the world would be a better place if people wouldn’t take things so seriously. If someone does something to someone else, or something bad happens in their life, who cares? In the ‘big picture’, these things happening are so tiny, so totally overlookable that it’s like they’ve never happened.

The size of our planet, in comparison to the rest of the Universe, is so small, so close to zero, that it can be accepted as such. What does that make us? A figment of some higher power’s imagination? A tiny speck of dust upon another tiny speck of dust, so insignificant that it’s like we don’t even exist? Everyone needs to think about this. Now, once you’re really wrapped your mind around life as we know it, put your problems in perspective: not so bad, right?

I think that the key to true happiness and enjoyment of life is to simply put yourself in perspective. Looking at the size and magnitude of the Universe, and then comparing your own size to it is really humbling. It really puts life in perspective, and you realize that you are the one in charge of your own life, and it’s up to you to decide what that means.

Why Does It Matter, Anyway?

Over Easter, I was at church with some of my extended family. I was surprised to see that one of my younger cousins took to singing the songs and hymns very enthusiastically. He’s nine years old, and it was all I could do to keep myself from laughing out loud when I heard his less-than-perfect singing voice belting out the words at what must have been the top of his lungs.

After the initial humour of the event passed, I began to wonder. Why doesn’t he feel embarrassed? He was gathering both stares and smiles from everyone in the audible vicinity, yet he remained completely unphased; happily singing like he was the only one in the church. I then became very jealous. How awesome would it be, I thought, to be able to act in such a way that make one’s self perfectly happy and content, without having to worry about what other people thought of you? The thought left me speechless. The reality that our actions are shaped, pressured, even chosen by the ones around us really blew me away. We say that we don’t give into peer pressure when topics such as drug, sex, and alcohol come up, but I had never realized how much pressure we receive from our peers without even noticing it.

It really makes me envious of young children. They can act in whatever way they want (to an extent), without anyone seeing anything wrong. It really makes you wonder what point in time society deems a person to be ‘too old’ or ‘too mature’ to do something. Could you put a number on such a thing? If the general public chose an age, and said that once you reach it, you must act like an adult, would people obey? Is society so brainwashed, so zombified that we sacrifice our own pleasure and happiness to fit into some sort of twisted ‘clique’? I wish I could say it wasn’t true, and have my conscience remain innocent, but I’m afraid I can’t.

Look around. Stand on a sidewalk, downtown in a major city. People bustle by, talking on phones, engaged in conversation, often too busy to utter a simple ‘excuse me’ or ’sorry’. How different do you think their lives are from one day to the next? Do you think that they make unique choices and decisions on an everyday basis, or are they just following the flow that’s followed, in turn, by the rest of their colleagues and acquaintances? Can we all still be called unique? Do we all still possess qualities and traits that can identify us from one another, or are we so buried beneath our careers and jobs that we have trouble seeing life outside the office?

Just some thoughts that were running through my mind.