I Have Lived Long Enough

            I know what it is you are looking for. I know what it is you are wanting out of this paper that you are holding in your hands right now. You want a summary and strong response paper on a designated article, but I’m tired. I’m weak from the thought of graduating in only a few short weeks and I’m terrified that all the things that my teachers taught me, the things that really mattered, that they are going to waste away inside my skull and unless I put them into use now, they’re going to disappear entirely, and I need to know if they are worth knowing or not. If these things they say, “Think outside the box,” or “Dare to be different,” mean something, that they have some sort of place in this world of static and stability, and people who write safe papers because they know it will get them a good grade, and that’s all that really matters to them, is the grades, not the assignment, not the emotional attachment that should exist with every single piece of writing you ever create. My thesis is this:  There is more to life than what is in the textbook, and that there is nothing in this corporation world more terrifying than someone who has said, “I have lived long enough.”

            From the age of five, children are placed into a schooling level called Kindergarten, usually only half days, which are used to teach colors and the basic lessons of life. Some parents feel it necessary to give their children a head start by sending them to pre-school the year before. Then from kindergarten children move into elementary school, which typically consists of 1^st-5^th graders, where they are taught basic math skills, basic English, how to write cursive and read words and use the dictionary. The basics, to lay out the way for the next grade levels, where there are more in depth basics. Around 7^th grade, children are allowed to take electives, which are classes that they can choose to take, like art, or sports medicine, or drama. Then they are moved into high school, which offers more elective choices, and they can begin to move into fields that interest them. They continue until they graduate from 12^th grade, when they receive their high school diploma. Many jobs that offer benefits and bonuses require a diploma. All colleges require it, or a GED, which is the equivalent of a high school diploma. They can then further their education by going to college, and even specialize in a particular field.

            And that is my summary of American Education. Ever since we were young, so little we could barely do anything but mess ourselves and have our parents be proud when we put the right words to the right objects, we are groomed to give answers. We are taught through banking, where teachers put in information into our skulls where they can later ask a question and we have to give them the right answer, and even if a young boy sees the color green, he is told to call it red because that’s what the world says, and if he’s different he’s wrong. But when he goes back to his desk, shame-faced and head hanging low, he looks up at the poster on the wall that shows the little stick figure standing alone, and the colorful chalk words of, “Dare to be different.”

            We send mixed messages at children from a young age, and as they get older, and they learn the right answers and learn what teachers want to hear, that’s what they say, and they soon forget the dreams they used to have and that’s why no one has invented the hover car yet, is because the people who were supposed to invent it grew up and went to school to be a scientist where they told them that it was impossible, and because teachers are always right, they believed them, and gave up.

            I’ve read books all my life, and none of them are the books that I’ve been told to read, and it’s the books that I’m not told to read that are the best. It’s the books that no one else wants to read that are the jewels. I found Schopenhauer’s Telescope in St. George sitting on a bargain table for two dollars in Wal-mart. It was the best purchase of my life. Full of teachings and telling me not the answers, but the questions that I should be asking to find the answers on my own. Why don’t we study books like that? Or Hey Nostradamus. A text filled with the words of four people who’s lives are connected in such an incredible way by such an incredible event that the words, “God is now here, God is no where,” and look at the difference that one space can make between words and they don’t teach you that in English class. They don’t teach you how incredibly powerful spaces between words are. All they teach you is the proper use of hyphens and semi-colons and the difference between ‘where’ and ‘wear’.

            My psychology teacher once told me something that I’ve never forgotten. She told me that if I’ve been taught to do something one way, do it another way. Benjamin Jowett once said, “Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl,” and isn’t that the best philosophy you’ve ever heard? Just do it. Just do what you want to do and don’t back down because you are doing it. When they give you lined paper, write lengthwise across it. And when people won’t stop calling you Kat instead of Katie rename yourself Citrus Blaine and don’t respond until they call you what you want to be called.

      We study books about how to write, but do we ever study books that send waves of pure electrical emotion through us? Books that make us question our own sanity? Deborah Blau nearly killed my best friend, but no one knows who Deborah Blau is because no one has ever read I Never Promised You A Rose Garden because no one wants to read beyond the required curriculum because everyone is wondering what good it’s going to do them having read these other book, but I just want to slap them and stand on the desk and quote meaningful three liners from A Softer World and tell them that they should always try to read anything and everything because each book we read is just another brick in our personality and don’t they want to be interesting and intelligent and a little bit crazy from the books they read?

            And you, Mr. Roach, I know right now you are marking up this paper like crazy for run on sentences and improper sentence fragments, but no one actually talks in proper English and grammar, and that’s what life should be, run on sentences and human emotions all wrapped into words that flow so easily that you yourself think like this. These are thoughts, directly translated from mind to paper, and this is how the world should be written.

            Imagine right now, that you are standing on a snowy mountainside in a foreign country, centuries ago, with a sword in one calloused hand and a shield strapped to your arm. The snow is up to your ankles and there’s a harsh, cold wind blowing and fog in the valley but you’re waiting for the enemy. Think of which is more frightening; an enemy who is cautious and eager to preserve their own life, or an enemy who has no fear, who has no reservations and no will for preservation. It’s the enemies that say, “I have lived long enough” that are terrifying, because they are the unpredictable ones, filled with strength and desperation.

            Which brings us to where we are now. With me writing a paper that is what you want and yet not what you want, and the education system becoming more and more ineffective for people like myself and Deborah Blau. I may fail on this paper; you may give me a big, fat, red F, but I will not retreat, and I will not explain, and I will let you howl.