Lesson #17

    I would like to take a moment to consider what the “true nature of life” really is. From the day we are born, we are all trapped in an existence where we are forced to make choices that will define our future. With each year we grow our decisions become more important, adding onto the stress we face. Though this poses the question of what it really means to go through life.

    We start off as babies, with a “vital light” that comes from an innocence and lack of experience with the world. Children are the beautiful creatures that captivate the attention of adults, who usually lack most memory of their early childhood. This is the stage where everything appears to be purely fascinating; the adolescent craves every ounce of knowledge they can absorb. Yet this innocence comes with a certain level of dismissal to their ideas; adults consider themselves wiser than their children, but in reality their mentality is just more clouded. If you think about it, the most well-rounded people are those who are unbiased-- our youth. They have not had the experiences that are able to persuade their views in a certain direction. At this stage they are “nothing but life;” there is world of opportunity ahead of them, and they are the ones who can see it the most clearly.

    As life goes on, these children become adults. Their new found responsibility comes with mountains of stress, and most come to the conclusion that life is “a hard fate.” During this stage their vital light becomes tainted, and the simple joys experienced by children become harder to appreciate. The joys in life begin to come from more superficial things, such as a bonus at work or finding a good sale. Although these things may seem meaningful, they begin to overshadow the natural simplicities that adolescents adore. It seems as if those who choose to ignore the struggles of life are perceived as naive, yet in reality they simply captivate more “vital light” than others. Although adults have physically aged, their mental maturation is what makes them adults. The most significant change they acquire is their view of humanity.

    The final stage is being considered elderly. These are the people who have had the most life experiences, seen the world, know what it is like to be a child and an adult, and are far enough in their lives to see through it all. These people now contain a completely different kind of light. Their vitality may be running low, and their brains are full to capacity, yet many of them often return to the simple joys of life-- though not completely. The encounters they have prevent them from returning to a stage of innocence, though they begin to understand why everything seems so wonderful in the eyes of a child. There is a certain connection that grows between the beginning and the end, one that bonds the hearts of the aged with the hearts of the young; they reach an understanding of what it means to come full circle. This is when the “true nature of life” begins to appear-- even after all these years, the elderly take the time to notice what has been mostly forgotten. The world, although different, returns to its state of beauty. They enjoy the wonders of life that are only temporary-- as they wait for the next stage of life, where they will return to their innocence.

Lesson #17: Beauty and wonder should not be lost with age.

Lesson #16

I myself think I am Las Vegas sometimes. Not because I believe myself to be overly extravagant, but because I often feel like the “world outside.” Right now we all live in this extremely tense atmosphere that is full of people doing everything they can to stand out to colleges. I see my friends running themselves to exhaustion trying to become the most appealing to schools that are terribly hard to get into. Every single friend I have is currently trying to get into the U of M medical school, and frankly I have no such desire. Science has always been my worst subject, and I would never dream of pursuing that as a career. They all stress about their grades in ways that I can never imagine. For that, I always feel like I am doing something wrong. I wake up everyday to go to school with the future doctors of the world, and that makes it incredibly hard to feel like I belong.

All of my life I have been dreaming of being a lawyer, and defending people that have been wronged-- which in itself seems like an incredible career, but yet for some reason so out of the ordinary. As all of my friends have complex conversations regarding DNA, I cannot even begin to grasp these concepts. Yet if you put me behind a podium with something to argue about, I could have the time of my life.

I was helping a friend write a debate the other day, and it finally occurred to me how different my brain works, compared to the brains of my friends. As she sat there trying to work out every ounce of logic, I was thinking about the million different kinds of emotional appeal. I realized that as much as I want to be someone who thinks about nothing but sensibility, I will always be the person who can convince someone's heart before I can convince their brain.

Now I feel like I know Vegas on a personal level. It can never blend in, and it cannot assimilate with the dessert around it; nor can I blend in with the science majors of this world. Vegas is always taken like a joke, the party place of the west-- but nobody understands that it is simply different from everything surrounding it. I may not stress about my grades like everyone else does, but that is because I have to be passionate about something to apply myself to it.

As much as we make fun of Vegas for being one giant party, it is also full of people who seem to be able to make a business out of anything. We underestimate their ability, just like I too underestimate my own. I am surrounded by people who have 4.0 GPAs and who will become the future geniuses of this world, but just because I aspire for something different doesn't mean that I cannot change the world one day too.

Lesson #16: A path is like a fingerprint, no two can be the same.

Lesson #15

    If you think about the concept of the American dream, it sounds extremely far-fetched. It is the idea that this country allows someone to have the freedoms it requires to flourish and create a life for themselves. Although this idealist mindset appears unblemished, the reality is that the United States withholds it’s freedoms in other ways. This nation may be physically free, yet we are also the 3rd most depressed country in the world, and have leading levels in alcohol and drug abuse. So I would like to pose this question; do we glorify the United States?   

    I tend to believe that we have so many mental health issues because people focus on their external appearance and economic status more than we focus on our personal connections, and overall well-being. The lack of time that we spend simply enjoying the beauty of life is something that is pitied by those who spend minimal time obsessing over external values. The United States has a foundation that is based on the idea that “the human body is ugly.” Naturally many people would not admit to this-- yet we spend much of our lives going to the gym so we look in shape, looking at ourselves in the mirror, comparing ourselves to others, judging those around us, judging ourselves, buying beauty products, researching the ways we can change our imperfections, aspiring to be others, and wishing that we could make ourselves perfect. This country may look wonderful on the exterior, but those inside know no such freedom. There is a reason that we look so alluring to outsiders; and that is because all the outsiders see are the billionaires, and the fancy award shows, and the supermodels, and the lavish lifestyle that we all crave. What they miss is all of the people who already live in the US, who are striving to be someone that we can be proud enough to show the rest of the world. In our nation fame and riches are the only way to be well-recognized.

    When I went to Germany this summer, I came back feeling like I had seen the world in a whole new perspective. I have never met people who were as kind or as patient as them. I did not stay in a tourist city, so I am well aware that they were not simply nice to my family because they had to be. I felt more at home there for two weeks, then I ever have here. The people there say hello to each other on the streets, and pay for the meals of those at the table next to them; they walk places rather than speeding in cars; they sit in the park and talk to their neighbors rather than rushing to their phones. They stress the importance of those around them, and their community had the familiar comfort of what a home should feel like. Here I don’t even know the names of my neighbors, and our community has a very “cold comfort.” I find it reassuring that there are others there, but very few of them are involved in my life. We treat our neighbors and our society as purely others who are also trying to survive, rather than being genuinely interested in knowing who they are.

    To outsiders this is what the American Dream is. They simply see economically stable people living in a free country, and they automatically assume that it is a well-rounded place. This is how america is glorified, or might I say simplified. Freedom and wealth do not make up a country-- it is core values that shape it. We may be economically thriving, but the people within are suffering from the mental confinement that has been placed in us. We are all striving for recognition from our society. The American Dream is a very isolating experience. We all hope that one day the people in our lives may “raise a monument” for us, but the only monument most of us receive is the one we are buried underneath.

Lesson #15: It takes a full perspective to fully understand.

Lesson #14

    I find it utterly embarrassing that in society today we would choose to add another car to our collection or buy another pair of diamond earrings, rather than cherish the millions of wonders that surround us on a daily basis. It is as if society can never be satisfied with the provisions that many of us were born with. My fear is that society is already beyond repair, and we will relinquish this world to our future with nothing more than the craving to fill our souls with material possessions. It is sad to say that most of us still want the new iphone, or a shiny new car— when there are people in this world that don’t even have the luxury of a steady income. We tend to forget the importance of mental well-being, and those suffering from poverty. This greedy nature we express is something that will haunt those who fail to realize that a shallow life will never lead to true joy. We think that we can just throw away our problems and replace them with mass-produced items.

    It is not just materials that we discard. Humans seem to have a limited threshold for anything of sentiment. We live in a world where much more than just milk is labeled with an expiration date. Even friendships are often set with a time-limit. I think most of us have those friends that we spend time with purely when we see them fit to our necessity. These would be the school friends, and the workplace acquaintances of the world. We choose to not form these relations further, because we do not rely on emotional connections to fulfill ourselves; we instead are captivated by what we see on store shelves. Just as Eighner said in “On Dumpster Diving,” “Even if I had a home with extensive storage space I could not save everything that might be valuable in some contingency.” The problem is that we seem to mistake the word “valuable” as something purely materialistic. No price tag can be placed on most of the wonders of the world, yet we seem to limit ourselves to be enslaved by objects that can be easily replaced. This is the reason why our country is so wasteful; people have refused themselves to think of the smiles we see on the faces of others as something to treasure. We would not be so careless if we started filling ourselves with mental reassurance, rather than the items that can be held in our grasp. I think it is crucial to understand that a flat screen tv cannot fix a broken heart, and a faster car cannot drive us away from our problems. We instead need to focus on building ourselves as people, not building the mountain of overproduced plastic that we will leave to our families once we are gone. I regret to inform us all that we seem to cherish possessions over physical relationships. The bond of hearts that we make with the real people in our lives should be what fills our homes, not the most expensive china, or the newest surround sound speakers. If we are really limited to the things of value we should keep, then we need to stop buying what will make us temporarily satisfied, and then throwing it away in next week's load of trash. We should all take a minute to remind ourselves that having the most in style clothes will not make us more loved, and maybe then we will stop pining to look presentable on the exterior. I urge us all to stop recognizing ourselves based on how much we own, and begin to see each other based on the quality of our characters.

Lesson #14: Life is about the emotional connections.