The first movie I remember watching after we moved to the States was the Lion King. I was absolutely enamoured with that film, I couldn't tell you how many times I've watched it since then. As far as deciding what I want to do with the rest of my life, I need only cite the first stanza of the Circle of Life:
"There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round"
Pretty overwhelming, if you ask me.
Thus my interests are almost constantly shifting, always feeding into one another. To understand why chemicals bond the ways they do and how they create our world, you have to peek in the door of at least 3 different classrooms: physics, biology, of course, chemistry. To get why narrative structures in videogames are changing you have to understand microeconomics and the influences from the film industry. To know why memes are becoming more and more nonsensical and yet more commonplace, you have to examine philosophical concepts, the political climate, and even linguistics. Nothing seems to fit in those neat little vacuum-sealed compartments we'd like them to.
Context. He is the killer of my time. And as a detective tasked with solving the perfect crime, I've followed the threads in search of this murderer for as long as I've been able to form thoughts and I am quite afraid that he has led me on that "endless round" which keeps me going under this "sapphire sky".
The intellectual experience that has most impacted my life was my first Kentucky Youth Assembly conference. It wasn't necessarily confined to one subject matter but rather the invitation to discuss and learn about anything we thought was relevant enough to discuss. KYA is this beautiful, messy event where students play the roles of delegates and debate about topics they find important and would like to see changed in the state of Kentucky. It was, for me, not only a great educational or recreational experience but also an opportunity for introspection, to learn how I could actually improve myself.
As a 6th grader, it put me in a situation where I was discussing issues with people that I would probably never see again. I could make as many mistakes and be as awkward as I needed to be and it would be alright. And slowly, throughout the next 3 years, I learned from those mistakes and awkward moments. With enough practice, I stopped stuttering every time I fidgeted or read something aloud incorrectly because it didn't matter. As I kept speaking throughout the other conferences throughout middle school, it no longer bruised my pride to need help to understand something or to make a very obvious mistake. KYA changed my whole world view. I had always been privately aware that most of my actions won't matter very much in the big picture, that I was just another speck on a floating rock that is sinking into a sea of starlight. Insignificant.
But after KYA, the connotation of insignificant began to change from hopeless and futile to relieving. Now it's more like: Insignificant.
Sublime, if I remember its definition correctly, is a description of something so grand and outlandish in scale and nature that it makes you feel as though your insignificance is a blessing rather than a curse, that the pressures of simply existing are lifted from you. That is how I would describe that experience. Sublime.
Because let's be honest here, (<wink wink, nudge nudge> and all that) it most certainly isn't all about me and I'm grateful it isn't.
(P.S: Credit to Juliann for giving me the idea to use fonts to better express myself. You're awesome.)
As a 6th grader, it put me in a situation where I was discussing issues with people that I would probably never see again. I could make as many mistakes and be as awkward as I needed to be and it would be alright. And slowly, throughout the next 3 years, I learned from those mistakes and awkward moments. With enough practice, I stopped stuttering every time I fidgeted or read something aloud incorrectly because it didn't matter. As I kept speaking throughout the other conferences throughout middle school, it no longer bruised my pride to need help to understand something or to make a very obvious mistake. KYA changed my whole world view. I had always been privately aware that most of my actions won't matter very much in the big picture, that I was just another speck on a floating rock that is sinking into a sea of starlight. Insignificant.
But after KYA, the connotation of insignificant began to change from hopeless and futile to relieving. Now it's more like: Insignificant.
Sublime, if I remember its definition correctly, is a description of something so grand and outlandish in scale and nature that it makes you feel as though your insignificance is a blessing rather than a curse, that the pressures of simply existing are lifted from you. That is how I would describe that experience. Sublime.
Because let's be honest here, (<wink wink, nudge nudge> and all that) it most certainly isn't all about me and I'm grateful it isn't.
(P.S: Credit to Juliann for giving me the idea to use fonts to better express myself. You're awesome.)
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