from Dan Young of This Providence:

Last night I watched my brother graduate high school. On an academic level, graduating high school is a cinch. Pretty much anyone can graduate high school. It really doesn’t require a lot of brains. You don’t even have to learn anything if you don’t want to, just do the assignments, hand them in on time, show up for class…you graduate. However, it’s the stuff in your life surrounding the school work that really attempts to fuck with you and make you fail at what would normally be a simple task. Maybe you had to move, maybe your family fell apart, maybe a parent lost their job, maybe your girlfriend dumped you, maybe a friend passed away…wow, looking back through that list, I encountered all of those things in high school, on one level or another. Family, friends, lovers and teachers all have just as much potential to be a hindrance as they do to be a support (whether they know it or not). These are the “distractions” you simply can’t ignore, you have to deal with it, but at the same time you are expect to maintain your focus on finding the length of one side on a damn triangle? Yep, that’s just how it goes. The real accomplishment in graduating isn’t the passing GPA, it’s wading through all the shit and keeping your chin up, doing the best you can, so that you can continue to move in a forward direction in your life.

If you’re still in high school or college or whatever, I’ll tell you right now, THAT NEVER CHANGES! You always have something trying to get in the way of the places you want to go. That’s what makes life an adventure though. To some degree you can look at it as a losing battle, that’s the way us pessimists usually find our thoughts wandering, but I keep reminding myself to not be such a downer, to move on, to just be patient and keep trying. The worst thing we can do to ourselves is to let ourselves get distracted, I do it all the time. Spending hours on Facebook, or watching some shitty movie all the way through because I’m too lazy to convince myself it’s shitty, sleeping for 12 hours a day… wow I’m confessing to a lot here…haha. Thing is, it bums me out when I waste my day.

Charles Darwin…I don’t remember much about the guy’s scientific theories but I love this quote (I read it on some over-priced inspirational poster in an over-priced poster store…posters are ALWAYS over priced…except at our merch table, of course! *winks*), “A man who wastes one hour of time has not discovered the meaning of life.”

Alright Charles, I’ll agree with that, but now I just need for figure out what it is to waste an hour of time. Well that’s subjective really, isn’t it?

Just something to think about.

I don’t know what I’m going on about, to be frank! When I sat down to write this blog, I thought to myself, “I’ll start with something like, ‘My bro graduated high school last night’, and see where it takes me!” Haha! And somehow I ended up giving an inspirational speech and talking about a Charles Darwin poster…sorry if this is painful.

Let me leave you with these final thoughts. For everyone reading this that is out of school forever or just for the summer - Relax, take it easy, but please don’t spend too much time willingly sedating yourself in front of a fuckin’ TV or computer screen. Move forward in your life, in your relationships. Spend time with people you love. Isn’t if interesting to think about what life would’ve been like before TV? Before the internet? I actually kind-of remember that one! Are we getting lazier by the generation?

Live your own life, don’t just watch other people living theirs!