Growing Up

By Ryan Lee

As we grow older and older, the traits that we took for granted in people as we were growing up (innocence, sincerety, selflessness, integrity, child-like nature as opposed to human nature, faith, consistency, etc. etc.) become so sparse that life sometimes makes us examine our very reasons for breathing each day. I sit there sometimes and realize how many of us have become retards by growing up (not us specifically, I mean people our age). There's so much more that comes with assimilating into society than just not thinking for yourself. There are life changes that affect everyone around us. There are lifestyle changes that come with conformity that change our whole being, our whole person; that warp our souls and make us into infantile adults who don't really have a background that matches the person they are today. Did that make any sense?

What I'm saying is that the things we did in the past made us into the people we are today. Ga Tech didn't make me into who I am today. My high school didn't make me into the person I am today. It started way before that. I am a lot of who my dad is, whether I like that or not (in a lot of ways, I love it, and embrace the things he has taught me). I was not only challenged, but I had an example set. And I'm not going to stray from that example, no matter how much an employer pays me. No one will buy me off, and I see that in you. It's rad. Not many people have that. Not many people can say "No" to temptations. Not many people are consistent. Not many people know. And when the people who don't know realize that they don't know, they just sit there and look at themselves. We don't know everything, but we have a viewpoint. We can realize when we're wrong, we can see it when what we thought was right might not be the perfect thing. But there are a lot of things that run deep that I think people have lost. Or maybe they have suppressed it. I don't know, but I do know that as we get older, fewer and fewer people have it. You've got it. I don't really know what it is. i can't really place it, but you've got it. Maybe it's something so small that it's easy to have. But why are so many people blind to it? Why are so many people complacent without it? Why can't they say something and relate to other people. They don't speak English. I don't understand what they say. I don't understand how they think. I think that when I realize this, I'm comfortable being set apart, but it also makes me know that I've got to do something about it, you know? It's like, "they're not going to do it, so I guess we'll have to." We'll do the job because we can. we might have different ideas about where these gifts came from, but the point is that we've got 'em. And we can use 'em.