Rally Your Hope

Growing up is not all it is cracked up to be. Life is hard; being a kid is easy. When you are young the world is your oyster. A child has the potential to be literally anything. I mean, they are able to achieve even the most difficult of goals. However, as we live we lose our potential. The sand in our hourglass slips through open fingers as we permit our lives to run out. The longer we live the harder it is to attain the greatness we once sought, just due to the daily decisions every person makes. We close our own doors through inaction. The perfect time to begin will never arrive. Therefore it is imperative that we make our own perfect time. No longer can we give up dreams to death for idleness. It is murder. Apathy is reckless endangerment of our lives; it kills all we care for. How can we stand by as death creeps up on our hope? We tell our children to shoot for the stars, to dream big because the sky is the limit, and yet we slide through life heedless of our own advice. Stop! Quite wasting your potential! Open your eyes, you blind man, and see! There is nothing restraining you but yourself and your own fear, hate, discomfort, apprehension, loathing, distress, anxiety, laziness, apathy. Awake, sleeper! Dream, dreamer! Truly live, rather than waiting. What are you waiting for? An invitation? "Stop asking if you can achieve greatness and take it." Have you realized what I have yet? We must cease delaying and realize our dreams: seize our hopes. Build wings for flight if you must, but for the sake of heaven above and the earth as we live on it take action. Do not return to your procrastination after reading this. Do not simply be roused to inaction. Do not open the door to apathy. Rally your hope.

Speech

I thought, since the title of my blog is Hope Itself, that I should post my valedictorian speech on the subject of Hope. So, here it is.

Hope. A simple, four-letter word. But what is it? What does it mean? "Hope is the thing with feathers," writes Emily Dickenson. Merriam Webster calls hope the expectation of fufillment. I say that hope is a choice. A choice to stand up each day and move towards a goal. To improve upon our weaknesses and grow stronger. Hope is not an intangable ideal but rather a definitive action. Failure to take this action is failure to believe in the future. That future will be difficult, and life will have challenges, but we have all been equiped with the tools to surmount those obstacles, stand on our own two feet, and hope. High school is the best place to learn about hope because high school only has one goal. It is not to learn mathematics, or English, or science, or languages. High school is to prepare for the future. We are taught to form our own thoughts and opinions and we learn to become our own people, people with their own dreams and aspirations. I, for one, have decided to follow my dreams and hope in my future. And let me tell you, that future is bright, because we, today's students, are the future. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the graduating class of 2011.

Insanity, Inconsistancy

Outside, the rain is falling so thick that you can barely see three feet in front of you. If you go outside in the rain without an umbrella, which makes more sense: that you will be soaked completely and instantaneously, or that you will be dry? That you will be as wet as water itself, of course! How about if you go outside in 1,000 degree weather without sunscreen? You will be burnt to a crisp, no question. What if you see a child who is about to be hit by a car? Would you push them out of the way and save them? What if you were the driver? Would you still speed? Dp you speed? Just as occurrences in nature demand consistency, we must have it in our lives. Without it, what can possibly make sense. Things have an order and a stability to them that is impossible to argue with. It is intolerable to live in such a way that there is no order. In such a world, there would be no truth. There would be no logic. there would be no knowledge, science, love, art, language, communication, religion, or sanity. If we are not consistant, we have no foundation to build a life on. Inconsistency literally is insanity. Saying one thing, but acting on the contrary is madness. If we speed, we endanger not just children, but everyone around us. So how can we then profess the sanctity of human life? As humans, it is our goal, no it is our responsibility to get our priorities, philosophies, and ideologies straight. Once we know what we believe, then we need to live it. It is not enough to simply know, for knowledge in and of itself helps no man. It is the function, the actual use of the knowledge as a tool that proves its usefulness. So think a little. Decide what you believe. Find the holes and inconsistencies in your life and patch them up with action. I live a vastly different life than I wish to live, and that is okay as long as I am still striving to reach my goal of consistency. Remember: insanity, inconsistency.

Read Between the Lines (A Short Monologue)

I live a simple life. I wake up every mourning and shower and eat a 
My existence is broken. Pitiful. Once upon a time, I was a revolutionary, but now I am broken. 
small breakfast of toast and milk. I ride my bike though the 
Once I cried for rebellion, but not I . . . just . . . cry. I wander through a desert of people, each a 
crowded street to my job. I love my job. I work in a wonderful 
grain of sand is another hopeless face. I slave away in a dirty, gray cubicle for a dirty, gray 
building. I work in a wonderful cubicle. I work for a wonderful 
government that works only for their own interests. It uses and WASTES the very people it
man. He works for the wonderful government. The wonderful 
professes to protect. Those in power attempt to control the masses. They break us down until
government works with my best interests in mind. They never waste. 
we know nothing but mindless brokenness. Oppression from above. They feed us ridiculous
. .After I work through the mourning, I eat and apple for lunch. An 
propaganda, wasting our potential. Words loose their meaning when passing between smashed 
apple a day keeps the doctor away. After I work through the 
pots, vessels, with no hope and empty eyes. We hide, we HIDE our faces, unable to break
afternoon, I chat with the secretary. After we chat, I ride my 

through. Without hope, the masses are swindled into apathy. They will die without someone 

bicycle through the cobblestone street back home. I eat soup for 
to raise them up. We will die without someone to raise us up. Once upon a time I was a 
dinner. Alone. I read the newspaper. Alone. I watch television. 
revolutionary, but now I am broken. Once I cried for rebellion but now I cry for a savior.
Alone. I go to bed. Alone. I live a simple life. I wake up every 
Save us. My existence is broken . . . Pitiful.
mourning and shower and eat a small breakfast of toast and milk
. . .