2005-01-25
late night reflections
Mrs. Bernhard in guidance sat me down in the chair in front of her, and Chris was right next to me. Looking at me straight in the eyes, she gave me a warning:
"One of our students here last year attended Rochester and only lasted a semester. It's cut-throat, competitive, and people will be nasty and rude," she says, firmly.
And now I get jittery.
"But...I know that you can handle it, and, you're not the type to let anyone step over you."
I think I have a pretty good idea of what it is I'm getting myself into. I could tell myself lies and say that everyone else except the Eastman Music Conservatory kids, is nice...but that'd be telling myself a lie and desperately trying to cover up this problem.
I believe in perfecting things. My writing, for example...study habits...grades--yes, I believe those things can always be perfected. I do study for at least three hours a day. However, I do not believe in that whole concept of competitiveness--I despise competition in any way, shape, or form.
You take something you love, and in this case it is knowledge, and you begin to...butcher it. You begin finding ways to somehow place the limelight on yourself through that thing you love...and sadly, in the end, you cannot even begin to find a trace of that which at one point made you so happy.
So, while I take immense pride in the things that I do...I revise until reaching near perfection...I refuse to become one of those people.
Oftentimes, we are so incredibly programmed...and fail to realize that we're doing something because someone else wants us to, and not because it is what we truly wish to do.
I do things because...well, it's my nature.
I can leave in August and begin my new life without the pressure of competition.
Whether or not I am misquoting him, I know not...but, I believe Thoreau once said, "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to have found a school. But so to love wisdom so much as to live life according to its dictates: a life of simplicity, trust, and magnanimity..."
'Tis the mark of the individual, methinks. And, why compete when every thing which makes this short life, filled with ephemeral creations of my heart's hopes, happy, is right here?
And a home need not be a palace of white, glistening marble in order to be suitable...so long as it contains those familiar walls that watch us dream and hope--the walls that watch us grow and floors that creak under our feet as we dance slowly to a tune.