This past Sunday was the birthday of my friend Jeff Samek who passed away in 2011. In his memory I wanted to post this speech he wrote for when he graduated Williston High School. Jeff was one of the deepest people I’ve ever met and an unbelievably unique thinker, and although this speech is about High School is translates to all areas of life. Love you man!
The Things We Carried
This is a story of many told by only one, the unified history of a collective group. This may not be the whole truth or even part of the truth, all I can tell you is that it is the truth seen through the eyes of a few. This is a chronicle of thoughts and dreams, of events and memories, of life and eventual rebirth. This is a story that has no definite beginning and hopefully will not end as the last word on this page has slipped from the memory of the reader. This is just a set of words but hopefully these words can grow and evolve to express something that can not be defined by words alone. This is the story of life and the weights we carry through it, weights that prevent us from flying and weights that ground us to who we are. But these are the weights that we were given to carry through the unceasing tides of experience.
We carried that which we could not go without, items that served us well through the endless flow of days. We carried cell phones and ipods, cds and mix tapes, electronics of every brand, make and model. Items that were frequently used and taken for granted, whose true value was not realized until the occurrence of their absence. We carried cigarettes and lighters, ID’s and car keys, the barest of essentials that we would not dare be caught with out. We shouldered the tools of expression, guitars, sketchbooks, our voices, our bodies and any other medium on which we could crack our minds open. The instruments of the arts were always held close and respected as we understood that color sound and movement were often times more meaningful then the spoken word. If life is experience then experience is simply a hollow self serving pleasure unless depicted and expressed through some form to those around you, so some of us thought. We carried a sense of humor and an open mind and an incapacitating desire for the truth. We reaped the benefits of not taking ourselves too seriously and were pleased when others were able to do the same. Treating our time here as a chance to learn; none of us knew all the answers but that never stopped us from trying to find them. We held onto countless stories of the best times, the worst times, of times that had been altered so much no one was sure of the exact truth. We carried memories of better times and old friends, some of which are still hard for us to believe that they are now just memories.
All of us carried the weight of our mission, of the unceasing goal that we have always had but has only recently shown its importance. To survive this place, to get into college, to finally be released for the confines of this school and be free to roam the world to seek our own fortune. Although unimaginably distant at times, it was sometimes all we had to push ourselves through that one sports game, or exam, or rehearsal that bled past the limits of our patience. We carried out side missions, tributaries running off of the great river following towards the ocean of graduation. All of us sought to abstain from the conventional, to be able to laugh at our own mistakes, and to have humility regarding our triumphs. We wanted to blaze our own trail rather than stick to the cleared paths of the careful and the conservative who came before us. The path loops and curves, twists and resides, and at some points appears to go completely backwards. Sometimes we have to continue on in the pitch black of night, the ground covered by leaves and foliage that fools our eyes and makes it appear as if there is no path at all. Although the detours are many they will perhaps only amplify the exhilaration of finally reaching the end. We are determined not to lose anyone on the journey fueled by the dreamed of those who grew tired or overburdened and were forced to turn back. We all carry the mission, squarely on our hearts, of enjoying what time we have left together before we must finally part ways at the end of the trail.
We carried vague rank which was determined by age and specialty, but was ultimately determined in the high court of public opinion. While physical age separated the seniors from the underclassman, it did not necessarily dictate the value of a person within the group; we were well aware that the age of the body does not dictate the strength of the mind. The humorists and conversationalists ranked near the top as they were able to lighten the mood or break the occasional awkward silence that feel over us. Following closely afterwards were anyone with proficiency in the arts and the ability to express oneself in a form outside of the spoken word. Many a night we have spent spell bound by the harmonic cords of an acoustic guitar or by the grace of an actor to shed his soul and take up the personality and mannerisms of another. Below the artists came the technicians, the mechanisms and those who just happened to be in the possession of expensive pieces of machinery capable of transporting us from place to place. While we could all use computers some of us could manipulate them on a level similar to how others would manipulate a canvas. When ever times were slow our resident digital guru would entertain us with the innumerable wonders of the wired, soon to be wireless, world. At the bottom of this chain of command lies the followers consisting of the young , the immature and those who simply had not expressed themselves fully enough to be placed into a definitive position. While translucent and constantly changing these ranks helped to define us and escape from the stereotype of a rag tag group of kids, a stereotype that was certainly true in more then one regard.
We carried with us nick-nacs, odds and ends, objects of religious value, good luck charms and things we carried for no other reason other than they had been victims of circumstance. Among these trinkets we carried crosses, jewelry, hair picks, jade eggs, keys to doors that no longer exist and a prolific amount of playing cards whose value was now probably less than the paper they were printed on. Stuffed animals, large oil paintings, broken windows and fake Hawaiian key chains made in China were all among the ranks of these possessions. We hoarded boxes of cheap ramen, watches that deceived you into being late for class, gift cards that we refused to believe had been depleted many months earlier and not to mention an absurd amount of caffeinated beverages that we would find stashed in the most remote corners of a dorm room. Whether it was a small charm, a religious artifact or a half written poem created three months earlier these objects gave us strength. Perhaps not a concrete physical strength but the strength of remembrance and familiarity that allowed us to continue onward and face the day for better or for worse. I can say, with a rare and commanding certainty, that in the absence of friends and support, it is often this kind of strength that will allow you to press on into the next day.
We carried with us fear, faith and superstition coupled with a sort of sixth sense that seems to manifest itself in different way through different people. We had faith in each other and in the stability of our lives; a faith only challenged by the fear that our faith was ill founded and delusional. We believed that certain places were unlucky for the sole reason that through our ungrounded fears we had made them unlucky. We believed there was no god, we believed there was an eternal everlasting god, we believed that the only thing we knew for sure is that we knew nothing. We carried the superstitions of Karma, the distrust of faiths besides our own, the distrust of authority because any form of power will inevitably be abused before it is relinquished. We held the fears of both youth and old age, we dwelt on the obscure happenings of tomorrow rather than addressing the issues of today. Crumbling under the expectations of others we failed to see that as the dust settled it was only our own dreams that were left standing. We carried with us beliefs and philosophies of others that we ground down and eroded to form our own. Somewhere in the back of our minds we carried the faith that there was more to Williston than the four year education that was rapidly drawing to a close.
What we carried was not solely based on necessity or its practical value in our everyday lives. It was not based on the values of our parents or the mindful lessons of any particular school master. What we carried was determined by experience and happenstance, by being in the wrong place at the right time. These pounds of materialistic baggage and idealistic philosophies were nothing more than the sum of the people, places and events we had accumulated and experienced through out our lives. These were the things that shaped us, that defined us, that bound us into something we can hopefully look back on as four of the best years of our lives. Because the weight of these objects became not only our own but a shared burden that affected us all in different ways. A raft when navigating deep waters and a crutch on unleveled ground. They became a burden that we can one day drag up the steps of graduation and proclaim, “These are the things we chose to carry”
