The Graduate.

I found this on my computer, it was an english assignment,

i shouldve been the fucking valedictorian

:)

To The Graduates,

I have watched you walk down the hallways, head hung at half mast, carrying all the little splinters of your broken heart like they exceed the weight of Armageddon, blitzkrieg or maybe Hitler’s very first attempt at oil painting. In actuality, the human heart weighs approximately 8 to 12 ounces, dependent on your gender and your build. This is not an attempt to belittle your problems, merely to portray them honestly. I have walked beside all of you as you celebrated all the little, inconsequential half steps in life. Your mother wallpapered your kitchen with kindergarten diplomas and certificates praising you on your inability to be tardy, your singing voice that put you among such musical legends as the Von Trapp family, or maybe the Celine Dion’s of the world. I have shared your history. If you look closely, my name will be somewhere in the margins of your memoir, just to the right of James, the misunderstood, anarchist skateboarder you always wished you were and Charles, the soup kitchen employee who patted you on the back like you were off to fight wars whenever he said goodbye to you. You would bus home, listen to the woman behind you talk to the window and sleep with your head against the sky. I know because I sat just a little to the left of you.

It is important to remember that, up until now, our lives have been parallel, pre-organised by our parents and society. We differentiate ourselves by carving out little niches in the soon-to-be obsolete social hierarchy apparent only in cafeteria table groupings. The hierarchy is determined largely by who wears the most eyeliner, can throw the most perfect spiral across a green, green field. Ultimately we write the same tests. We despise the same teachers. We have probably kissed some of the same lips. We watch the same late night reruns, eat gallons of ice cream when our 10 ounce hearts are lying somewhere under the kitchen sink. We all go home, cry into the couch and think NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME, in capitals and italics, just to emphasize our alienation and to underline the fact that this is NOT trivial. This is obviously blitzkrieg. This is genocide. The splinters of our hearts are being slaughtered and obliterated by the indifference of life and football-playing ex-boyfriends. We all have the same incorrect and exaggerated perception of our non-issues. This is undeniably true.

When I step off the podium you will all shuffle and teeter across a stage, smile while wearing the same dated hats and the same robes that have no colour scheme. We will be robed in blue, little carbon copies of each other, our skin painted up with the hieroglyphics of shared experiences. What differentiates us is whether or not we found this sameness comforting, terrifying, oppressive, or nothing at all.

What is it you intend to do once you say goodbye to a million shades of beige walls? (Note: the government is all about economizing, and they’ve never fully appreciated feng shui. The government feels that feng shui and high fashion are on the same level of unimportance as research and development. They are almost as disillusioned as a gym full of teenagers, riddled with angst.) There will be no more clear cut divisions, lockers and time tables will not continue to divide all the little inconsistencies of our lives. There will be no hierarchical system to define ourselves by. We become what we allow ourselves to be. Is this liberating? Is this frightening? Your uniqueness is going to actually exist; you have the potential to completely disassociate yourself from society and live, entirely undefined, in some hippy hellhole in northern B.C. Will you do this? Or will you commute for hours, waste your life praying for wars as you sit in the glow of traffic lights and the heavenly beams of all the CEO’s, as they pat you on the back? They congratulate you for “doing the right thing.” But is it their right or is it your right? Don’t be afraid to ask the question but more importantly, don’t be afraid to find your own answer.