Clayton+B’s+2017+OpEd+Article

= =  The Speed of Life By: Clayton Brossia We live in a world that is constantly improving, constantly advancing, constantly making the next big thing. According to the Smithsonian, humankind first started about 6 million years. Yet civilizations did not begin until about 6 thousand years ago. 600 years ago two halves of the planet were still unaware of the others existence. 60 years ago the Soviets launched the first spacecraft (sputnik one) into space. Only 6 years ago the iPhone 4S was perhaps the most groundbreaking and advanc ed phone to have ever been released because of the inclusion of siri, and yet today we have already advanced so far from 2011 that most of us would not take an iPhone 4S if it was offered to us because it is already outdated.

When technology rapidly advances, the world rapidly changes. We are not simply discovering breakthroughs to further improve our world at an exponential rate, we are changing the way that the entire world functions at an rate unparalleled to anything else in human history. Where will we be in 60 years? Predicting the future is a pretty complicated ordeal, because there are thousands upon thousands of unforeseen events. The New York times stated in 1920 that a rocket would never be able to leave the atmosphere, and boy were they wrong. So in 60 years where will we be? A Utopian society with flying cars and robots? A world that has destroyed its environment through its own selfishness? Possibly a mixture of the two? The one thing we know is that the world we be a lot different than it is today…

So what? Why does it need to be mentioned that the ways of life are changing rapidly. It is not just society that is changing rapidly, it is our day to day lives that are changing too - they are speeding up. The advances of technology have enabled us to do more, but not only are we expected to do more today in our work or in our schooling, we are expected to **LIVE** by the motto of “do more”. I'll ask you what is more appealing to colleges, someone who takes 6 AP’s, does a sport, volunteers at 3 different organizations, runs 2 clubs, but stays up till 3 every night because they have to complete all of their homework and multiple projects; or the person that takes 1 AP in the subject they love, participates in either a club or a sport, is able to do fun stuff with friends and family, and navigates their high school life free of stress for the most part. Obviously the first one

Why is the first person the more successful person? It’s a basic eye test, I’m sure we would all say it's because they accomplish so much more than the second person. But why should doing more at a semi-successful rate be ranked higher than being successful at a lesser amount of things? As I started to mention earlier, it is because doing, specifically doing more, is one of the fundamental ideologies of the world today. Nike’s slogan is not //just contemplate it//; it is //just do it//. The saying does not go //the more highly successful you are at fine tuned things the merrier//, it goes //the more the merrier//. Doing more is better than doing less which is better than doing nothing

I’m not about to start advocating for everyone to not do anything and sit around all day so nothing new can be done, because "doing" is an extremely beneficial thing to society. Doing brings about actions, and actions bring about change. Change can be good, change can be bad, but change is a necessity to life. My problem is that the “do more” attitude is emphasized in the world today is taking away from other crucial parts of life. The “do more” student I described is the more successful student, while the “do some” student is classified as a slacker. Thus students who want to get into a successful college begin to do more to improve their applications, leading to the requirements of getting accepted being increased, leading to students needing to do even more. It’s a never ending loop of being required to do more. The “do more effect” is literally causing society to increase the rate of speed in which they live their lives, destroying their own patience in the process.

Here are some of the most annoying things in the world: crowded streets or hallways, slow wifi that literally takes a page 10 minutes to load, traffic, being stuck on an airport terminal, waiting on the phone for the IT department to answer, commercials… do I need to say more. There’s a pretty common theme here, they all inhibit you from doing what you what in some way, shape, or form. I’m not really blaming people for hating these things, because some of these are extremely annoying. Yet it's the overall conscious of society that slow and less=bad and fast and good=more; this is what is dangerous

I’m going to go back to the student examples again: student 1 who does literally everything and student 2 who does not have a jam-packed schedule. It’s already been agreed upon that student 1 is viewed as the more successful person, but now I am going to ask you who would you rather be. Take some time to think this over… [cue jeopardy music]... alrighty then. I am sure a fair amount picked student one because they will have the more successful life, and I am sure a fair amount picked student 2 because they do not want to stay up till 3 o'clock every day. Which is a fair point, because it is an extreme example, yet right now I am calling any fellow Amex student who picked number 2 out for lying. There might be an exception here or there, but we all actually chose to be student 1 by following the system and by taking the advanced classes! If you take away the fact that the students' futures were dependent on the way they lived their lives, who would you pick this time around? I am assuming an almost 100% for student 2. I think it is pretty self explanatory, because student 2 can be both successful and still live life! They get to apply most of their effort to what they actually enjoy, that one amazing subject, playing a sport, debating with speech and debate, being a part of youth and gov; whatever it may be, they can do that on top of spending times with friends and family. Which is all we really want to do isn't it? Right now is the golden age of adolescence before we become adults and begin our next adventure.

Why are we all more likely to be student 1 then student 2, because we care about our future. Which is as good of a reason as any right? There is nothing wrong with choosing to be a student 1 because of the way our society is structured. I am for sure a student 1, I’m the definition of a college board child. I have have the grades and the extracurriculars: Bioscience, Cross Country, leadership conferences, community service... they all contribute to my hopes of having a successful future. I mean I enjoy these things and I also do get plenty of sleep, but here is my critic that I have for me and everyone else, so hopefully I can follow my own advice in the future: **STOP LIVING IN THE FUTURE AND SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!** (that’s one of my 5 f bombs for the year but I think it is pretty important to use here).

I have covered a spectrum of ideas here’s how it all ties in together. The world is only going to keep getting faster and faster, while placing more and more of a demand to “do more” on a society already obsessed with "doing more". It is stupid but it is the way it is, and I do not see much change coming, so go ahead and be part of the system if you so please, I am part of it. Enable yourself to do great things in the future, but **DO NOT** focus on the future so much that you lose the world around you today. Gandhi said that “There is more to life than increasing it’s speed” Appreciate its beauty, spend time with your family, watch that movie with your friends instead of doing your homework next time, and as cliche as it is, **STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES**.

To end this I shall leave you with a short anecdote regarding perhaps the most captivating experience I have ever been a part of. Not the campfire circles with my friends, not my family vacation to Hawaii, not winning the state championships, it was more powerful than any of these, and it will be only foreseeingly passed by my wedding day and the birth of my child. It was silence. Pure silence in all of it’s majesty accompanied by one of the most stunning views I have ever seen. The newly emerald green hills of Arroyo Verde were being bombarded by the torrential rainfall that occurred this past month. The biggest storm in 6 years had come and I found myself along the side of my friends at the top of Arroyo Verde completely soaked and covered in mud after our trek to the top. As we started our descent the eye of the storm arrived, and we were granted a temporary yield from the downpour. As I looked down at the rolling fog only 20 feet beneath myself, I saw it had formed a blanket around not only the park, but the city as well. I was awe struck as twinkles of sunlight shone down upon us, and I felt a tear roll down my cheek. Words cannot do justice to my sensations, but I knew that everything would be okay, and here it shall be left.

One final note I want to make is that at the end of the day I had felt a bit sad that none of us had had a picture to reserve the memory. However now I am glad that I did not waste that moment by taking a picture of the scene, for it cannot represent the scene nearly as well as my own memory can. While the details of the image may be fuzzy in my head over time, nothing can ever take away the power of the time that the whole world was silent, and I was its spectator.