Larger than Life

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born

and the day you find out why.

- Mark Twain

I am a sucker for reminiscing and an even greater sucker for recreating the same times and moments that were special. Perhaps there have never been and there will never be a time in our lives than the ones we spend in our last years of formal education. In fact I pity the ones who led their lives in university as an extension of the many years of rat race they were about to embark(though at the same time, I do acknowledge that there are circumstances and histories that put people on the paths they are on.) 

As such when graduation came and fellow colleagues trotted around in their graduation robes and forked out thousands on graduation photo shoots, I wondered if they knew what they were about to leave behind and more importantly if they had any clue what they were about to start on, One just have to compare the number of idealists and optimists among adults and among students to get a good idea of what either phase of life entails. In fact, just ask your parents.

It was somewhat around this time, when I was holding adult life in such a low regard, that a friend approached me for some help with his Valediction speech. As writing and speech were two of my passions, I sought to write his whole speech and make it worth remembering not just in school, but perhaps in the world. In the process, I did my research, reading some of the most brilliant commencement speeches ever written. 

Almost all these speeches these speeches had a recurring theme, something that I had earlier encountered in the gem of a book, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It revolved around the importance of finding,well, a meaning in life. In fact, studies and articles seem to emphasise finding a meaning more than pursuing happiness as the key goal in life. Here meaning did know refer to the one's definition of life, but more on what one lived life for. What all these speeches and articles kept regurgitating was the need to find something bigger than ourselves to live for, a tough challenge for my generation and me, where the ascent of social media and private spaces have made me the individual, the most important thing in the world.

Most articles called this larger than life thing, passion. Some, God, others, love. Though the idea behind it was always that one was not the most important thing in the world, a belief that perhaps all of us subconsciously hold on to. The more we hold on to it, the more difficulties crush us, challenges overpower us and life drives us to misery. The sad truth now is that the majority of the people seem to believe that a passion, typically in one's work, is the sole satisfier of this need, while love and spirituality have taken the backstage, a situation exacerbated by the idea that this passion has to be found now, whereas history has proven that some of the most successful men found their passions late in their lives.

The theme did not eventually make it to the commencement speech but regardless, the seed was sown. It would be another two years into the trials and tribulations of adult life that the idea seemed to catch on. Have I reached that second most important day in my life? Certainly not, but at least now I  know what to look out for.