Break

Sigh.

I feel like every teenager is going through, will be going through, or has already gone through the questions and doubts I think about every day. Well, every week, 'cause taking 4 APs takes up a lot of one's time.

This week, in my lovely AP English class, we read the quirky commencement speech of David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. He discussed the cliches of commencement speeches, the true meaning of a liberal arts education, and the lens of self. But what really stood out to me (and to the rest of the class, I'd like to think), was this idea of a default setting. 

A default setting involves the boring, the tedious, the virtually dead parts of adult life. The setting that we just automatically turn on when we're in the "hideously lit" store or in the disgusting traffic filled with "huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's."

***

Life isn't short. It's the longest thing you'll ever do. And if it appears that it's purely the young, optimistic, and sprightly individual of myself speaking, that very well may be true. At times I've looked back on my 16 years and thought to myself, "It's all so fleeting. Life passes so quickly." And I wonder why. And I think about David Foster Wallace. And I realize (or think I realize) that it's because I've forgotten to turn off my default setting. And maybe others who view life as too short have as well. Perhaps in forgetting to switch off our default setting, days and weeks and months and years become indistinguishable from one another, the same workaday lifestyle that sort of blends together, and so we forget how long life actually is, how much time has actually passed. 

"Our whole existence here is based on this great premise that we're, special. Superior to the whole thing. But we're not! We're just like everyone else. Look at us, we've bought into the same ridiculous delusion, this idea that you have to resign from life and settle down..."

What's the difference between a long life and a short life? If we compare the man who has lived 90 years working in the same pencil factory his entire life with the 50-year-old man who has traveled the world, held several jobs, and fallen in love numerous times, who has lived a longer life?

What makes a long life? What makes a good life?

***

"Carpe. Carpe. Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

***

Now, as a 16-year old, I'm not very brave. I'm not very courageous or knowledgeable or, God-forbid, wise. But I have dreams. And I have fears. And not being able to turn off my default setting now or not too late in my adult life is one of them. 

Last year, I set a goal for myself. I would reform my work habits and study habits, I would become a more efficient person to allow time for my own creative pursuits. So that I would not only become more successful in school and please my parents but so that I could also directly fulfill myself and my art and my goals. And now, with the load of everything I've taken on in the name of "living on the edge" and "pushing the limits," I wonder if I've bitten off more than I can chew. And I cry and I scream and wallow in my frustration that this change that I've demanded of myself isn't coming as fast as I'd wanted it to, and I'm flailing in the between. Then, I remind myself. I'm living a long life. For myself. I'm living a long life for myself. And I must constantly remind myself to switch off my default setting. Because as a junior in high school, it's so easy to just shut down and do school. 

***

It makes me remember a scene from Rocky Balboa, in which Rocky reprimands his son for searching for people to blame for his own failures.

"It's not about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take, and keep moving forward."

Never stop pushing. 

Rhetoric, Rhetoric, Rhetoric

This week was all about rhetoric. Rhetoric, rhetoric, rhetoric.

To be honest, ideas of categorizing and structuring the persuasive techniques of writing bored me to death last year (sorry, Mrs. Chatel). Now, however, I've learned to look past my disgust with the bland dissection of it to realize that debate is actually, like, cool. Like, really cool.

When we are young children, we are so prone to taking whatever we are told and absorbing it, without question, like a sponge. It is only when we grow up and begin to see multiple viewpoints on topics are we able to break away to form our own opinions. The ability to doubt, is so important, I find, in discovering one's own identity, and it is one I'm still honing today.

When I was in middle school, I believed that I was an atheist; I was proudly atheist and all those other religious people are stupid and don't know what they're doing and I'm right and they're obviously wrong. It was only because I was surrounded by this youth culture filled with atheist beliefs and thoughts and because I really hadn't been that much exposed to religion growing up, that I so vehemently believed this. I was proud in my self-discovery, when I really didn't have much of a clue about what was going on.

Now, I find that I really have absolutely no idea what I think about religion. In a passage in The Reason for God, by Tim Keller, he stresses the importance of doubt and re-thinking things. I remember reading an editorial last year on the importance of self-doubt in essay-writing. It is this doubt that acts as a safeguard against the tempting effects of appeals, emotional, ethical, and logical.

Untitled

This week, we finished The Crucible and had a great time analyzing John Proctor's most heart-wrenching decision, to tear up his confession and go to the gallows. Reputation, honor, and legacy are enveloped in a main theme of The Crucible and address the question of which is more important: honor or life?

The romantic, Disney-story side of me congratulates and cheers on Proctor's noble decision as worthy and honorable. However, as a devout doubter, I doubted this. 

Confused about my own misgivings about Proctor's decision, I asked my father what he would do if he were one of the accused. My father, ever the pragmatic and wise Asian man, said that he would confess. Why? "Because everything comes from life. Religion comes from life. Honor comes from life. Shame comes from life." And so I pondered.

I think that what he meant to say is that life is so precious and important that we cannot give it up for something like reputation that seems so insignificant in comparison. Life is concrete; once we give it up, it can never be retaken. Reputation, in comparison, can be altered, can be started anew. Some would argue about what the point of living would even be if one's honor was lost in confession. I guess because I'm still young, I'm optimistic about living. You can change things. You can start over. You can go and begin anew. 

We discussed a Goethe quote that read, "The whole art of life consists of giving up our existence in order to exist." We noticed the difference between the "existence" as a noun, an inactive object, and "to exist" an active verb. We agreed that the quote meant that we must give up our stagnant "existence," or our life, in order "to exist," or maintain our honor and self-respect. I... kind of disagree with that.

To me, life is the ultimate verb. It entails so much of our existing; our movement, our breathing, our feeling, our touching, our thinking. In comparison, things like honor and reputation seem pretty stagnant. They are the nouns of our world. And I think that the Goethe quote should be interpreted as, we must give up our worldly objects, our worldly preoccupations with honor and reputation, and instead focus on ourselves, our own physical and beautiful existence. 

As Richard Dawkins so eloquently stated, "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We are the privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds; how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"

If ever asked to choose between something as malleable and impermanent as reputation and something as beautiful and as irreversible as life, I will always choose life. 

Oh, Pohn Jroctor, My Candian Lover!

The Crucible takes us back to the time when heresy and burning witches at the stake were common things of the law. Arthur Miller's biting play personalizes the story of the Salem Witch trials, which centers on the accusations of a few power-seeking women such as Abigail and the effects on the lives of Salem that include John Proctor.

Now, I would like to liken the accusations and horribleness of The Crucible's story to the instance of a fart in the household. Ew, I know, a gross comparison, but it must be made.

Let's say that you have detected a mysterious odor, to say that least, and you know that everyone else can smell it. You feel infuriated at having your olfactory senses attacked so you decide to voice your concerns. Now, let's say that you've had an affair with a man named, oh, say, Pohn Jroctor (he's Canadian), but now he's abandoned you for his real wife, Belizaeth. Because you still hold resentment over your rejection, you decide to take out your frustrations by blaming her! Now everyone is inching away from her while Belizaeth is shaking her head no confusedly.

Drunk with your newfound power, you blame everyone who ever bothered you. Kyles Gorey for being ugly, Betty for looking at you funny one day in second grade, Martha Stewart for--well, I don't know, why not, and all the people who have the first name Goody, because that's just a weird name.

Admit it, we've all blamed a random person for a fart before, and we all know how easy it is, and how the accused will try to play it back on you, but it doesn't work as well, because the damage has been done, and we all point and laugh.

Why is it that when one is blamed for a fart, there is almost nothing that the accused can do to defend himself or refute the charge except to blame another? This is why the fart scenario is just perfect as a comparison for The Crucible, because the blame game is just so easily manipulable and because it is just so easy to point the finger (or fan the air and scrunch your face up while holding your nose in the most immature manner). Such was the nature of the Salem Witch Trials. When something like the existence of a higher power, which is so held in high seriousness and yet so unprovable or unjustifiable, is put into the hands of a few frustrated and repressed people, bad things happen.