It would be easy to stand here and reminisce about the things that happened in high school, but it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to the people and events I might forget to mention or the ones I never knew. Besides that's what yearbooks or annuals are for: to be reminders, not the memories themselves.
Nottingham has influenced me in more ways than either I or a team of psychiatrists could list, but I know that I'm coming away from these past four years with a broadened perspective and opened eyes. I owe that to the myriad different people and their ideas that I've been exposed to while studying here. Nottingham's strength is its diversity because in a microcosmic way, it mirrors the larger world into which we're moving.
And where we are moving is what I really want to talk about. I don't want to talk about technological buzz words. I don't want to talk about youth culture. I don't want to talk about anything that restricts or narrows. I would rather talk about that which is at the heart of progress… our vision of the future.
There are so many such visions, but I'll boil them down to two. We've seen bright and beautiful visions of the future, where all is peace, harmony, and ideal. We've also seen dark and dismal visions of a future in which all the great cities of the world have become alleyways on a depressing scale. These are the cities where it is always raining, always night, and always hopeless.
I, for one, don't want to live in those cities.
It matters how we see our future. If every movie we watch and every book we read tells us a story where the future is hell, it can be difficult to make the world of tomorrow anything different. But if we hold a vision of beauty in our minds then we can not help but strive for it.
Idealism and optimism have their place, nicely tempered beside realism, but pessimism adds nothing.
We can not live for the future, but only hope to live in it. This is where dark visions of the future serve their purpose, by reminding us of what not to do, what not to allow to happen.
A favorite movie of mine, Blade Runner, presents a world that is decrepit and corrupt. It has a truly vivid vision of an entire planet gone sour. I learned two things from this film. I learned that the future is what you make of it and that life is lived in this instant not in the next. One line from the movie struck me quite solidly.
Perched atop a crumbling building with rain beading on his bare skin an android crouches as death slowly crawls up its limbs. When he could have killed another man he instead gave life and then spoke softly about his own life and memories.
"All these moments will be lost in time," he said, "like tears in rain."
Syracuse has it's rain, too… don't we all know it? But is every drop that falls here a tear? I mean, think about the time you've spent here. Who did you spend that time with? Aren't your memories less about what actually happened and more about who you shared them with? That one line from the film told me that our time at high school and our lives themselves are only truly understood by those who lived them with us.
What fun would it be to remember the left-hand rule if you didn't remember who taught it to you five minutes before the exam? Ultimate Frisbee was the single greatest gym elective in the history of Nottingham, but that's only because you had people worth playing with… and against. No matter how memorable the concert you played in, the project you worked on, or the play you performed in, isn't the whole experience less about the stage that you're on and more about the actors, actresses, and techies you're on it with? The moments that make up these days ought to be shared with those around us, so we can remember both the people and the events that defined us.
Some of us may have plans for the future, others may not have the slightest idea of what they want to do. There's a line from a song that really catches the whole idea. "Many a road lies ahead, be sure that you're on the right path." So while we head towards the future it's important to enjoy the road we're traveling on. While we envision the future we live in the present, whether we notice that fact or not. By living in the present we can ensure ourselves a future.
So… here we are.
Albert Einstein, a man with fantastic hair on his head and a tremendous brain within, once said: "I never think of the future… it comes soon enough."
So, let us hold our vision of the future in our minds and in our hearts, but let us now rest our thoughts on where we are at this moment. On who is next to us and close to us, on our class of 1997 that we're in, and what an absolute joy it is to be here… right now.
© 1997 Daniel Parke -- All Rights Reserved