what parts we play

In my last entry I spoke briefly about school. Even though I’ve had to lay out of class for most of this last year I do still keep up with my school newspaper. This week is their graduation issue.

There has to be a term for the feeling you have looking at a list of names while feeling left behind. Seeing people who you’ve shared coffee, books, discussions, arguments, insight, notes, moving on in their life, their career. I am, and have been, a non-traditional student. I have been in school a long time since going back and it should no longer be a surprise to see people matriculating up the ladder.

It is somehow painful though to feel left behind. Many people go back to school later in life and make it through. I am no different than most. I took too long to find my path in college though. My history is now checkered. Were I to complete my undergrad I would be a bad risk for graduate school. The mythical PhD I finally found that I wanted, is likely now beyond my ability to attain.

It is a sad testament of our culture, our world, that I in tech support, already earn far more than most of my fellow students will ever dream of making as college English Professors. The world’s priorities are all about how can someone make the most money. What has the bigger payoff? What is more practical? The generation of today is being driven in larger and larger numbers into ‘practical’ careers. Yet, our country has increasingly become an economy of service industries.

Who will be our great thinkers, our great writers, and our great artists of the future? One of the most popular books of recent times is constructed for our world of microsecond attention spans. Rapid-fire chapters, often times not even a page long, flitting from scene to scene, character to character. With fodder such as this for our minds, who is challenged to explore for themselves. Characters are cardboard, depth is shallow, entertaining for the moment, but tiring in repetition.

Yes, it is with sadness I look through the school newspaper today. I’m reading the names of my friends who are going on with their dreams. I wish them the best of luck. I’d like to think one day I can follow them, but I don’t know if that will be true. I am starting to feel old, stuck in the system. I’d like to think that the ever-slimmer numbers of English, History, Philosophy, and Art graduates that come out of the universities today will be able to make their mark. I hope that they’ll have their chance to change the world. I hope that perhaps, just perhaps, there is hope out there, and that someone can show the world again that there is more to life than chasing the bottom line.

Perhaps that is the answer in a nutshell. If we can find a way through our own actions to show that there is more to life than chasing the bottom line.

As The Bard once said,
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players…”

Each of us can choose to make a difference…
It all depends on the part we choose to play.