Anneke+Z’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech



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Carpe Diem
=Text of Speech= All year I complain. I complain about homework, I complain about swimming, I complain that I have too much to do and not enough time to do it. And yet…now that it’s winding down I’m bored. I feel like there’s nothing to do. The whole year I live practice to practice. Assignment to assignment. During the height of the school year I have no time to reflect-, but now…now I have time to reflect and I don’t like it. I feel like I’m drowning, not in work but in thoughts. I’m not satisfied with my life and in these moments, the still moments when I have nothing to do, I feel the weight of this dissatisfaction pressing down on me. It frustrates me and makes me want to just stop trying because I just can’t see how to shake it off, do what I want to and still feel like I’m living up to my full potential. When I look to my future it’s plain. Boring. The same as millions of others. The plan is simple: 1) graduate high school 2) go to a “good” college 3) Have a career 4)get married 5) live happily ever after in the suburbs. That’s the mold, that’s what’s expected and I feel like the only reason I consider it is because I want to prove that I can do it, I want to prove that yeah I’m smart and yeah I’m capable of finding love. That path has security, but it’s boring. I’ll always know the next step. I don’t want to know where I’ll be in a year. I don’t want to know where I’ll be tomorrow. I want to stop planning. I want to go out and finally live in the moment. There is so much I haven’t experienced- there is a whole world out there waiting to be explored …but I’m here. I can’t break out of the mold; I can’t stray from the path I’ve always seen laid out clearly in front of me. Why? Because I have so much to lose. Because who strays off the path of a good life? What if the life I dream of is just an illusion? What if I can’t go back to the safe easy life? Will I lose part of myself, or will I have finally found myself? Right now all I can think is that the person you see here- the person you see every day isn’t ME or at least it isn’t how I want to be. Nobody will ever know the real me because I hide it- even from myself. The real me is slowly suffocating as each crazy idea or desire is spurned, sometimes by myself and sometimes by others and replaced by something that I “should do”. I know I’m not alone. My mom was like me- she had dreams, and fantastic plans but they never happened. She was supposed to go to Africa with the Peace Corps, she wanted to travel the world, but now she’s here, in Ventura taking care of three kids. I know she’s not unhappy, but I don’t think she’s satisfied, there is so much she wants to do but she is tied down. I don’t want that to be me. I want to be able to go to bed every night and truly look forward to the next day, never knowing what it may bring. I want to think about the future and be excited. Right now I feel like I’m just going through the motions…Is that the way life is supposed to be? That seems so wrong, and yet…it makes sense, it’s what people have been always been working towards for: stability, security, education, a family-- but why? Has it just been the ultimate desire for so long that it’s ingrained in our minds that that is what we want? It’s not what I want…but I think it’s what I’ll get. And that kills me... Is life worth living if you’re not living the life you want? I don’t know. Up until high school, everything I did wasn’t necessarily my choice, and when it was my choice I wasn’t meticulously calculating how it would affect my college application or how it would make me look better. I just did what I loved because I loved it. That simplicity is gone …I do what I “have to” and I’m bored out of my mind the whole time. I feel like I’m going insane because of the normality of everyday life. Sure, there are some highlight moments, but they are few and far between. I really do think about just doing something completely crazy that would throw everyone off--refusing to write an essay, saying everything that is on my mind for a day, walking up to that cute boy and just kissing him, because why not? Literally right now I //could// do anything. I //could// just walk out and not come back. I //could// just scream at the top of my lungs. No one could stop me. All anyone could do is react. Yeah, it would cause a stir, but there are always ways to get around the bumps in the road. And then my life would be back to normal again. I have no passion for daily life. All I want is that passion. To really love life and appreciate each and every day. To be passionate. To truly seize the day. That’s all I want and yet it seems like it’s just not possible. Maybe I’m looking for a fantasy and I need to just be happy with what I have. But is that any better? Is it better to just be satisfied? Nobody has ever made anything of themselves by just accepting life as it comes and not trying to make a change. Maybe the problem is I don’t want to live and die like millions of others, I want to be different but it’s so hard to be unique when you’re bogged down by homework and sports because when you finally have a spare moment, the only thing that sounds remotely appealing is some kind of mind-numbing activity that will distract you from everything you “could” or “should” be doing. There are practically no moments of self reflection. There is hardly a time when I sit back and think about what I REALLY want, what would make me REALLY happy. Without those moments, I have forgotten what I love, what I’m passionate about, what I want to do. I don’t get a chance to try new things, to explore, and discover what I actually enjoy. That’s a problem. What am I going to do when school ends and I’m forced into the “real world”? Will I just keep waiting and waiting for a time that will never come, a time when the only thing to do is figure myself out? Probably. In the future, I don’t want to see any more people like me, people wasting their life away doing things they don’t care about. I want to see people following their dreams and doing what they love simply because they love it. There needs to be more fun, more passion, more creativity. Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” I want to see a world where more people understand that there is more to life than straight As and a perfect SAT score. I want to see a world where as much emphasis is put on being a good person as being a good student. I want to see a world where people don’t wait to start living.

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