So the school year is over and I'm home for the summer. It has been an interesting year and if I were to describe it with one word it would be "enlightening". There were a lot of things I learnt this year, both academic and life lessons that I'm sure I've already forgotten due to the massive amount of alcohol consumed on my last day. I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about some of the more prominent lessons of this past year (and I may slip in one or two things from years ago). I'm going to write this in parts, one lesson today, and one each day over the next few days. Hope you like them.
The first lesson I want to talk about is a life lesson. Around Christmas I was sitting in the student study lounge (rarely frequented by students, ironically) and I over heard one of my classmates, Mary, having a conversation about life, the universe, and everything with the guy that had convinced me to join the program I was in. He was in the second year of the program, which means that he has now graduated. I'll admit I was eavesdropping for a while but eventually I joined in on the conversation to listen to what he had to say. Among the topics of discussion he talked about were God/ religion, stereotypes, technology, and life overall. Within a half hour of listening to him, I'm pretty sure I would have followed him anywhere. He had a way of speaking that made everything he said make sense. There are a few things he said that I remember but the one thing that I absolutely loved is "we're all waiting for the one big thing in our life to happen. You can live your whole life without a big thing but if you ever want to write your life story, you need a big thing. Without it, your story is just a series of anecdotes that people will read in the bathroom, and can set down at any time.... no real story worth remembering." That is something I find very substantial. I don't intend to write my life story any time soon, but even this blog is just a series of anecdotes. There's nothing big that they all centre around or have in common. They are just the preambles of a "Gentleman". The half hour I spent talking to Phil and Mary was a conversation that I think I'll remember for a long time. It gave me new perspectives on God, stereotypes, technology, and where life is going, and how you're going to direct it. It's something we should all think about on a regular basis.
let's try this again!
ReplyDeleteIt was an interesting read and I remember you telling me about this before although in less detail about the location of where you were when this happened. So I kind of disagree about this "big thing". I'm not waiting for a big thing. Maybe you males are but idk how many girls are waiting for the "big thing" or if we are, that thing is children. So i guess we know what ours is. I read that somewhere that women feel complete after having children and men feel complete by doing stupid things like climbing a Mount Everest or soemthing to feel accomplished. And how do you know your big thing happened? Does this sense of waiting go away? And what if this big thing happens at the age of 40? Then what? Can you have more than 1 big thing?
Answer that in your next blog.
You know, you don't have to rain on my inspirational parade. the point of this is that you can never write your life story if you don't do something worth writing about. Many women (I'm going to venture a guess and say the majority of women) have children, and many of those children are normal. So their story would be the same as many other stories. So if i were going to read the life story of every woman who had a child they would all be relatively similar and after a dozen or so, I'd stop reading because there's nothing unique about it. But with something big in your life, you'd have a worthy book.
ReplyDelete