Thoughts

It's summer time again. Time to feel relaxed and laze about, break out the lemonade, fester away on top of couches, and all that good stuff.

This summer...seems about the same, but so different in so many other ways. What a trite thing to say.

But where to start...
I didn't write anything about the end of school. I don't know why. Lazy, finals, unwinding, whatever the reason I guess I should now. All the seniors are going to be gone, very soon.

I honestly don't know how I feel about it. Sad of course, but the realization that time is passing hasn't really hit me. A problem that I still dont' know how to deal with. Freshmen camp was a...kick in the teeth I suppose. The first time that I looked around the band room or the field and didn't see all the seniors standing around. It was somewhat an eyeopener. Being a senior is a very strange feeling.

I think for a better part of my life I've always been under the wings of someone else. Always having someone guide me or tell me what to do and now that I'm a senior I should be the one taking over that job. It's a big, scary job though that I think that I'll probably shy away from for a couple reasons:

1.There is a scarcity of freshmen.
2.I don't find it to be my place.

I always find that people want to be the hero that we all see on TV, in the movies, or read in books. That everyone wants to jump in so that they can cheer someone up or be the knight in shining armor to help that damsel in distress. Then the whole scene gets cluttered up and I find that if I weren't a part of that then it'd be all the better, but then get accused of not caring. I suppose being rational isn't being caring.

But then I'll find myself sitting alone in an old donut shop, paint peeling, white fluorescent lights making my eyes want to bleed, with dulling pink table tops at 1 in the morning alone, watching a man on crutches struggling to carry a cup of coffee to his car. And I look around even though I know that I'm the only one in the store besides the baker in the bake rolling his dough. And I'll be fighting a mental and moral battle inside my head on whether or not to help this man. Of course the right thing to do would be to help him. But at 1 AM? By some kid who shouldn't be out this late? My sheepish manner got the best of me and he limped away into his car. I guess I'm part of the reason why youth looks bad.

I think it's those kinds of moments are part of what defines us.

Do we help a man getting mugged or call the police when no one else is around? Or do we walk by like he didn't see anything hoping that someone else will help him?

Do we help the elderly or do we think that some other more upstanding citizen will come by and help them?

Do we help a man carry coffee to his car or do we sit stupidly sipping away at a can of soda thinking he isn't struggling that much?

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Struggle.

Something else that makes us who we are. It's hard to have struggle when you're living in middle class suburbia. The struggle to find struggle in such a place. Or maybe not having struggle is our struggle. Or maybe I just have a different set of struggles.

Though I've thought a lot about this on my own Little Miss Sunshine put flatly how I thought.

"...he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."

I find it to be a perplexing thought. If we're happy then we don't learn anything. If we're suffering it shapes us into who we are.

Does that make happiness a waste?

Is the pursuit of happiness just that? Is it worth more to pursue happiness then to attain happiness? Is that why the founding fathers gave us the right to pursue happiness instead of just having happiness?

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That's it for now. More thoughts on the way.