It has been 13 long years since you first walked through the doors of your elementary school and began the journey that we call education. For those next 13 years, school was your constant companion, an escape for some and a nuisance for others. 4745 days has it been since you, the class of 2013, first conceived of each other as classmates.
113880 hours have you now completed of on your odyssey. How many of those were spent bickering in the halls,, browsing the internet, or carefully ignoring a teacher’s lecture.
832800 minutes, which were leading towards this day have now passed. And we are left with a single question, Why? What purpose has this day, for which so many preparations have been taken? What reason is there for this celebration, which you and your families have all gathered.
As much as you may hope, it doesn't have any at all.
Every second, of every minute, of every day, there is an unfathomable amount of horror and suffering for which most of us are oblivious. While we sit here, sheltered in an air conditioned auditorium, people have been born and people have died. Wars has caused the death of hundreds. There are droughts, famine, thirst, natural disasters and genocide. Helpless children are killed by virus, disease, and epidemics. In the time we’ve sat here entire species have risen up while others are silenced forever. While we sit here, there is intolerable suffering, Yet this arbitrary ending of four years of schooling is what we focus on.
In comparison, all these events, no matter their meaningfulness or distinction, are equally nothing but a blink of the eye in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. In fact, humans themselves have been little more than a flicker; the species Homo sapien have survived for only 90,000 years. If everything goes right, those of you in the audience will experience 90 years or so of life, or in other terms two hundred millionths of a percent of the time in which Earth has existed. And this is before we take into consideration the 13 billion year age of the universe. Our lives are fleeting, miniscule amounts of time and yet we choose to spend it here. We, frankly, don’t have time.
It may have occurred to a few of you that this is a bit harsh; that I am undermining the accomplishments of these students. Regardless, my words are not without reason. The goal of the education they are currently receiving is to prepare them for their coming life. This preparation would be incomplete without an understanding of what life really means. Allow me to elaborate:
Simply put, it has no meaning.
Since the dawn of time, humans have focused intently on finding reasons why this is not true. The emptiness and hollowness of life proves to be a torturous realisation to many of us and we create delusions to distract ourselves from it. There is no better evidence for this then from the geocentric view that was commonly held for most of our history. We placed ourselves at the center of the universe because that is where the most important object should reside. It was not until the efforts of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton that this view was overturned (Gaarder). Even with their evidence, the heliocentric theory was said to “pervert the course of nature” by John Calvin. It was met with resistance every step of the way. Again, it was our narcissistic view that led us to believe that humans were a higher class of beings, separate from the animals which have no purpose in life. We were important because we were different; different, that is, until Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution turned this notion on it’s head (Gaarder). He said that were not separate from the animals but of the same family. It goes without saying that this too was met with resistance.
The point in all of this is not to dishearten you or tell you that life is not worth living. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. In spite of the nihilistic nature of life proposed by Kierkegaard, you still have the potential to make life worth living (Wolff). Of the little time you have, you must make the most of it. Steve Jobs used to say that every morning he would look himself in the mirror and ask ”If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” This is a question we must all ask ourselves. If you were to die tomorrow, would you watch TV or browse the internet today? Would you sit at a tedious job with no future? If the answer is no then you realize where change must be made. Even this ceremony must come into question. You chose to sit here and celebrate these students’ accomplishments and waste precious time while you could have gone out into the world and exercise their knowledge. The meaninglessness of life, ironically, gives us reason to go out and experience the world. With so little time, you are almost forced to go out and have an adventure; sitting on the couch is no longer an option. the frivolity of life makes us focus on what is really important to us. Be that family, friends, or self-discovery. By realizing the absurd nature of the world, we can truly live our lives to the fullest.
Our existence takes up an insignificant amount of time and space to the world. You can sit here and waste your only life with useless events that no one enjoys, but ultimately you will one day die and dissolve into the nothingness that you were before birth. The universe will not care and, ironically, you will never know how wrong you were. And furthermore, what was that life spent doing? For many of you, it will be spent behind a desk working a nine to five job that is neither challenging nor interesting. A job that only further emphasises the meaninglessness of your life on this planet. It defines a life that is not worth living. A life that made no difference and is quickly forgotten by the world. I beg you to learn from this and change this. The conservative and most “realistic” path in life is not the one worth living. I leave you with these words, “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not where ships belong.” I urge you; stray from the routine of port and experience the ocean that is life.
Thank you and congratulations to the graduating class of 2013.
113880 hours have you now completed of on your odyssey. How many of those were spent bickering in the halls,, browsing the internet, or carefully ignoring a teacher’s lecture.
832800 minutes, which were leading towards this day have now passed. And we are left with a single question, Why? What purpose has this day, for which so many preparations have been taken? What reason is there for this celebration, which you and your families have all gathered.
As much as you may hope, it doesn't have any at all.
Every second, of every minute, of every day, there is an unfathomable amount of horror and suffering for which most of us are oblivious. While we sit here, sheltered in an air conditioned auditorium, people have been born and people have died. Wars has caused the death of hundreds. There are droughts, famine, thirst, natural disasters and genocide. Helpless children are killed by virus, disease, and epidemics. In the time we’ve sat here entire species have risen up while others are silenced forever. While we sit here, there is intolerable suffering, Yet this arbitrary ending of four years of schooling is what we focus on.
In comparison, all these events, no matter their meaningfulness or distinction, are equally nothing but a blink of the eye in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. In fact, humans themselves have been little more than a flicker; the species Homo sapien have survived for only 90,000 years. If everything goes right, those of you in the audience will experience 90 years or so of life, or in other terms two hundred millionths of a percent of the time in which Earth has existed. And this is before we take into consideration the 13 billion year age of the universe. Our lives are fleeting, miniscule amounts of time and yet we choose to spend it here. We, frankly, don’t have time.
It may have occurred to a few of you that this is a bit harsh; that I am undermining the accomplishments of these students. Regardless, my words are not without reason. The goal of the education they are currently receiving is to prepare them for their coming life. This preparation would be incomplete without an understanding of what life really means. Allow me to elaborate:
Simply put, it has no meaning.
Since the dawn of time, humans have focused intently on finding reasons why this is not true. The emptiness and hollowness of life proves to be a torturous realisation to many of us and we create delusions to distract ourselves from it. There is no better evidence for this then from the geocentric view that was commonly held for most of our history. We placed ourselves at the center of the universe because that is where the most important object should reside. It was not until the efforts of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton that this view was overturned (Gaarder). Even with their evidence, the heliocentric theory was said to “pervert the course of nature” by John Calvin. It was met with resistance every step of the way. Again, it was our narcissistic view that led us to believe that humans were a higher class of beings, separate from the animals which have no purpose in life. We were important because we were different; different, that is, until Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution turned this notion on it’s head (Gaarder). He said that were not separate from the animals but of the same family. It goes without saying that this too was met with resistance.
The point in all of this is not to dishearten you or tell you that life is not worth living. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. In spite of the nihilistic nature of life proposed by Kierkegaard, you still have the potential to make life worth living (Wolff). Of the little time you have, you must make the most of it. Steve Jobs used to say that every morning he would look himself in the mirror and ask ”If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” This is a question we must all ask ourselves. If you were to die tomorrow, would you watch TV or browse the internet today? Would you sit at a tedious job with no future? If the answer is no then you realize where change must be made. Even this ceremony must come into question. You chose to sit here and celebrate these students’ accomplishments and waste precious time while you could have gone out into the world and exercise their knowledge. The meaninglessness of life, ironically, gives us reason to go out and experience the world. With so little time, you are almost forced to go out and have an adventure; sitting on the couch is no longer an option. the frivolity of life makes us focus on what is really important to us. Be that family, friends, or self-discovery. By realizing the absurd nature of the world, we can truly live our lives to the fullest.
Our existence takes up an insignificant amount of time and space to the world. You can sit here and waste your only life with useless events that no one enjoys, but ultimately you will one day die and dissolve into the nothingness that you were before birth. The universe will not care and, ironically, you will never know how wrong you were. And furthermore, what was that life spent doing? For many of you, it will be spent behind a desk working a nine to five job that is neither challenging nor interesting. A job that only further emphasises the meaninglessness of your life on this planet. It defines a life that is not worth living. A life that made no difference and is quickly forgotten by the world. I beg you to learn from this and change this. The conservative and most “realistic” path in life is not the one worth living. I leave you with these words, “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not where ships belong.” I urge you; stray from the routine of port and experience the ocean that is life.
Thank you and congratulations to the graduating class of 2013.
