Sam+B’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=The Gold Soul=

Speaking about being an individual is a funny thing. Simply saying “Be yourself” always sounds a little worthless. I don’t want to be this “myself”. I want to be Sam. I am Sam. Sam I am. Half my life I hated ham all because I gave a damn about this rhyme I now sham on cam. And you can’t just tell someone how it’s done. You can’t give someone the recipe. You can’t even tell them to not conform because even the non-conformist is limiting their persona to a reaction to the rest of society. A counter-culture is still shaped by normal culture, but simply inverted. So if you asked me where to look for this so-called “individuality” I’d point you towards one direction: In. Introspection. I’d start with what has become my personal mantra: Fuck dogma. Ignore judgement.Throw it out.

Society and all the suppressive byproducts they have created just obscure your true self. Ignore your distorted perspective of the world around you and discover the clarity of looking in your soul. Outside voices will always attempt to drown the unique voice rattling ideas around in all of our heads. Glitter and gold will always lure us from it, but we can resist. We all have some basic intuition, some basic intuition that already knows what we truly want to become. There’s no point in searching for your individuality because it’s already in you, just waiting to be embraced. Get out of your comfort zone, look at yourself from the outside looking in and accept who you are, embrace it, and watch the brilliance flow from yourself. We all have what I’ve come to call a gold soul, a treasure just waiting to be released. So if I had to simplify the path of an individual to something worth slightly more than “Being yourself”, I’d put it a little differently: Loving yourself. And for anyone thinking self-love, or any love at all, is for losers and old people, just a friendly reminder, fuck dogma. No matter what I am to you, I’m happy. And that’s the freedom I’ve found, happiness is inside yourself. It’s not something so hard to come across when you’re loving yourself, thus living by the rules you love. Happiness coming from what YOU want to do because YOU want to do it, not because of anyone else’s opinion.

In the America I grow up in, I want to see more individuals cherishing their gold souls. I want to see less people submit to someone else’s reality and more people create their own. I want to be in an America created by the authentic unique speeches I hear in this class and not suffered by the disciples of conformity.

So why would I want to be an individual and break away from the collective? To create a reality I can be happy in, something I can’t be while enslaved by society. All the established goals, all of society's expectation, all their restrictions; I will be no slave. These things are in no way a reality, they are not concrete, and they are often not right. I find myself getting caught up in these illusions all too often, but now, I’m awake. Reality is yours to create. If you want a reality of unrestricted love, love freely; Create it. If you want a reality where llamas are the preferred mode of transportation, get your ass on a god damn llama; Create it. If you want a reality where an endearing greeting is the middle finger, welcome all of you beautiful people. Created. There are too many people today that if asked for their goals in life simply regurgitate the American dream shoved down their throat since birth. You tell me I want a mansion over the ocean. You tell me I want a private cook. You're wrong. Do you really want to settle for someone else's creation? When I’m a wrinkled sack of old, I want to see an America we created, not suffered.

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