I know not everyone in the world has the time to sit down and read a six-paged article; though, I can almost feel certain enough to guarantee you that, should you sit and read it, you'll begin to think in a completely different way.
Monday [ yesterday ] we had a guest speaker at school.
You know how those always go; everyone's excited or disappointed to miss a class they may or may not like, berate the powers unknown for making them sit in seats that make their hinds fall asleep and then completely go on about their day, forgetting what the individual who came to speak with them even said entirely.
Admittedly, I don't have the greatest of memories, but this one would definitely make a mark on me.
He, an African-American man, was identified as a "Dr. Mykee". I wonder if I can find him on the internet; give me a second.
Aha~! Success!
His name is Michael Fowlin, and he is an amazing individual, from what I gathered during the presentation. He has a Doctorate in Psychology [ if I'm not mistaken ], and is an actor. And maybe something else - see? That amazing memory coming into play here. Haha.
Well, his show, as the website says, is bookended [ meaning it starts with, ends with and is more or less centralized on ] by a poem by Langston Hughes.
"Still Here"
By Langston Hughes
Been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,
Looks like between 'em they done
Tried to make me
Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'--
But I don't care!
I'm still here!
The first time he said it, it slipped right by me. It sounded like a pretty awesome poem, and I recognized it from hearing it in middle school. However, as he continued with his presentation, I found that it held a deeper, pronged meaning than just a bunch of words that sounded... poetic.
Honestly, I went in there battered by seasonal allergies. There are two things that personally derail me: allergies and frustration. Allergies are a category all of their own. But, I digress - I went in there a bit disgruntled; I would listen, but I wasn't expecting much from it. The man spoke to us, he talked of discrimination, of injustice, of all the things that are wrong in peoples' minds.
Though, he started with a joke his seven-year-old daughter replies steadfastly to:
This explanation / recounting is much better than my own. Hahah.
Did you laugh? I thought it was pretty grotesque.
Dr. Mykee's daughter's response, however, he told us went something like this: "Daddy, Superman's not supposed to hurt you, he's supposed to save you." He then attributed the wisdom of mankind to, obviously, individuals who utilize their brains a lot more oft. Makes sense, right?
What color was the last thing you drank?
Don't remember? You didn't observe it all that well, then.
Would you get up to close the door or would you rather remain in your seat, bed, etc.?
By human nature, as we grow older and more experienced with things, we become comfortable, lethargic, and, ultimately, lazy.
Whereas, the individuals who are inspecting just about everything - the ones who are key in shining pearls of wisdom - are the ones who are new to the world's wonders. The ones who are years of age that you can count with both hands, approximately.
Pardon me for a second, having a bit of an allergic reaction. -runs to take allergy medicine-
I did forget to mention the song, didn't I? Well, here it is: Karmin - "Remembered" - it completely ties into the theme for this one.
His most entertaining bit was where he took his alleged talents [ making up voices; his anecdote explaining this incorporated prank phone calls when he was in about sixth grade and being quite the character in having girls' boyfriends chase him into the night at rendezvouses he was not attending; one particular instance took a turn for worse, and a girl's boyfriend and his friend died in a car crash, chasing after him - he didn't resent himself for it in the slightest, as it was a justifiable thing to think was funny when at his age: the phone calls, not the occurrence; ergo, he, more or less, turned his focuses to helping others rather than himself ( not belittle it, but, y'know, it's something that is an aside for the most part ] and created the persona for us.
Whether you read and recognized them on the website that showcased his presentation or not is not that important. It's the message each of them carry with them.
He reverberated the poem - "Still Here" - only to segway into wearing a cap and sitting in one of the four chairs on the stage. The first of his characters was named Jermaine - a young boy who dreams of being the President of the United States, as his mother prospects, yet is... rather hyper. In fact, he has ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - and is constantly being sent to disciplinary figures for disrupting class and such. His performance was absolutely endearing - I paid attention to the words he was saying, because you kind of had to try and keep up with speedy Jermaine. In the end, didn't appreciate always being in trouble; his engaging attitude made it easy for us, the audience, to sympathize with the youth. And it was particularly funny when he said he had to pee, hence his incessant tittering which could have otherwise been pinned to his ADHD.
He walked to the other side of the seats, picking up a jersey and showcasing it to us. It was a Rutgers jersey - Rutgers being a university in the state I live - with the number twenty-three, Alex is 89% sure. If this number is incorrect, so be it - the premise was that this character, Octavious Furious *something* was a football player. He was getting a full-ride to college for being a star running back. His story incorporated a feel of... unease. Pressing on matters that people don't usually like to sit through, Octavious revealed to the audience, through an aside, that he was a homosexual. The discrimination notice surfaced before, but now it took precedence here. Octavious tapped vigorously into the psyche of the audience - being a football player, it was in the interest of the majority listening. Octavious wasn't entirely dedicated to playing football after he graduated college, didn't care much for Going Pro. Though, the highlight of his life story to us was in the last game of the season, his team ran a game winning play that wasn't supposed to work. Octavious, confused, spoke with his coach - "Why did you call that play?" The play that wasn't supposed to work. "There's a difference between what you were supposed to do and what you needed to do, Octavious," His coach basically replied, without the logistics of the presentation. Octavious, saying that he didn't quite understand the difference to the audience, told his coach that he did and went on his merry way.
Next was a rather interesting character - his name was Benjamin and he was a Jewish-Italian. His story was pretty grim; not fitting in, not belonging - the norm, sure. But, y'know, in accord with Octavious' racial highlights [ being a black guy with friends of other races ], Ben found the rougher end of the antisemitism. As you could imagine, all the abhorrent associates of a hate-crime against a Jewish individual. Benjamin was.. very emphatic here; he even got really upset at the pitiful, racist jokes - usually race, as an ice-breaker, would be the pseudo-glue to hold people together, to, at the very least, make things seem nice: to make them gilded. He was emo, he admitted to the audience. Or to some degree he respected the goth and observed their like-mindedness. The one thing that stuck out to me was that he felt comfortable when he was adorned in all-black garb and walked through cemeteries. What kind of person you know who does that and is at peace with themselves? Not too many kind of whatever persons you may have been able to muster up, though.
After Benjamin and his depression came Sabine, and Indian-Asian female who is made fun of because of her appearance, because of her weight issues, because of her origin. She experienced the stringency of society, of close-minded cliques, of self-degrading acts like Bulimia. The pressures of life just led her into traps that she most certainly was too smart to avoid.
I don't know how or why exactly he was able to amplify these stories in such a manner that captivated us all, but he did. And it worked. He then went on things I occasionally skip onto in here: legacy. Have you been listening to the song? Should you have, you could most certainly tell that the song, even in its title, is relating to one's memory, one's honor and whatever they leave behind - the footprint to leave behind of the world. When he asked the audience if we've ever been asked by our parents "What do you want to be when you grow up?" nearly everyone raised their hands. When he asked us about "What will you leave behind - what will be your legacy?" I could only see one of my own friends uncertainly begin to raise his hand. I would have raised my own as well, but I was sincerely observing and absorbing his presentation. I needed the vigor that he was injecting into the room.
My mom always talks about legacy. She always does. And I can most certainly thank her for doing so - it's driven me to do things that I otherwise would have never done. Even making these blog entries is something I never really anticipated to ever be accepted by anyone other than a handful of my friends. Hopefully the words I scribe or the actions spurred by me or someone else in this world will carry on and follow through to infect the rest of the world positively.
Speaking of which, Dr. Mykee mentioned two articles during his presentation. One was on the Golden Gate Bridge suicides and such, while the other was of a survey of individuals who were 95+ years old and were asked about their lives. "If you could live your lives over, what would you do differently?"
If I'm not mistaken, he said that the underlying message was that they would reflect inward more - try and make things different and make things better.
But the one I wanted to focus more on was the one with the Golden Gate Bridge: Jumpers.
{ It was at the top of this entry, if you missed it or decided against clicking it. }
To sum it up, it's basically talking about the Golden Gate Bridge and how it's one of the most popular sites for committing suicides - in fact, it's number one. Before we get any further, however, let me say this: I do not condone nor encourage the act of suicide, and if there are issues, whether I personally am capable of executing them to the best of my abilities all of the time, it is important to talk them out. It's a mutual learning experience for us - there are occasions when people say something circumventing suicidal thoughts in the heat of the moment or facetiously, but they're all the same words.
The whole controversy, I think, of the six pages is the entirety of ethical obligation. A barrier, in short, would reduce the suicidal count, though people are worried of aesthetics, finances, and the notion that the repercussions may hurt people.
When I read the part about "public safety", I nearly glared at my computer, as if the people who said that would have seen my internal judgment.
So, yeah. Look at that, and take it with a grain of salt.
The part Dr. Mykee referenced, though, was on the last page.
The bridge comes into the lives of all Bay Area residents sooner or later, and it often stays. Dr. Jerome Motto, who has been part of two failed suicidebarrier coalitions, is now retired and living in San Mateo. When I visited him there, we spent three hours talking about the bridge. Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,” he told me. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’ ”
- "Letter from California: Jumpers", The New Yorker [ 10/13/2003 ]
It's crazy.
How often do you smile at strangers?
I smile at just about everyone in school [ on any normal day ] and I smile at most people on the way home. I never even thought about the things people do, the tests people have for complete strangers. All I look to do is better people's days, people's lives with a basic and pretty straightforward smile.
You may not care, because you don't know him, he may have lived his life already, or whatever excuse you may think up but I think everyone has their ruts, and they need a pick-me-up to turn everything right-side-up.
I most certainly did yesterday.
As I was looking around for the article, I found a few responses to it. Well, one response to it that also tied into another blog.
If you love reading, then this most certainly is the entry for you. Hahah.
WriteGray - "If One Person Smiles"
I read part of this first, then I checked out the other blog, ZenHabits - Find Stillness. It was really interesting; took a part of my mind that I rarely expound upon.
Read it. If you don't like it, all you have to do is click the "x"s on the tabs.
Oh! Oh! I remembered something else.
Benjamin was really upset at his early-schooling teacher for instilling the discrimination within impressionable children; "find what doesn't belong and strike it with an 'x'." His converse, in a much calmer tone, was "find what is different from the others... and put a smiley face next to it."
This was one of the many things that made me smile.
What was another thing, you ask? Well, after the four seats and their props had been identified, Dr. Mykee plopped down and assumed the poise of a physically impaired individual. He identified this muse as a male with Cerebral Palsy whose name was Peter. Peter was absolutely adorable, and not because he gripped anyone's heart with a hint of pity or entirely of compassion, but because he was a genuine person. He was relative to both you and I. Peter told us about this time he was in the supermarket and when a kid his - our - age was making fun of him; he wasn't bothered by the occurrence because it apparently happened all the time. The mother of the boy, however, lashed out at him, berating the boy for making fun of Peter for fright that what happened to Peter might happen to him.
When he started crying on the stage, I instantly felt a swell of tears burn at my eyes.
But I didn't cry. Because I was too captivated.
"It just hurts me to hear that people think that what happened to me is a punishment - that God doesn't love me."
Peter then went on to say that he loved himself. That he was proud of who he was, that there was nothing wrong with being Peter, that there was nothing wrong with being yourself.
You see why I adored his character?
One of the first things he said was, "you know what I do when I first wake up in the morning? . . . . I put on clothes, because people get freaked out by a naked guy in a wheelchair."
Just about everyone in the audience laughed, I'm pretty sure.
But, yeah. It was a
By far, the best assembly I've had in my four years of high school, and probably the best guest speaker I've experienced in my life.
So, that's pretty much it. I don't want to blabber any more, because I'm sure I'll be managing to do that after the retreat this weekend.
Yeah! That's right! =D The retreat is from Friday to Sunday. I probably won't have internet access Friday, so I'll take logs of each day in a notebook, and if they're neat enough, I'll scan straight from them. If not, I'll type them up for next week, no worries.
Until then, "you are beautiful." So, don't make a mountain out of a molehill, and don't try to climb the mountain barefooted.
Also, if you could have flying or invisibility, which would it be, and why?
Was your first impulse to answer to help other people?
Let's train ourselves so that it is next time.
"I'm Still Here"
By Langston Hughes
Been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,
Looks like between 'em they done
Tried to make me
Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'--
But I don't care!
I'm still here!
<3 ~ Monty.
=]
P.S.
There was something about clams and pearls, but we'll save that for another time. Hahah.
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