Jeni+E’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2016

  Joy and Appreciation

While trying to sit down and write my speech I lacked inspiration, but I knew I had to get it done. At the moment I had a million other things running through my mind like, I should probably be study for my math final and physio final this week. I am way too stressed out to actually write a decent speech. At this point I have slammed hard into a wall where I just have to survive and get through the day. Get up. Go to school. Do homework. Sleep. Rinse and repeat. I feel this way, I am sure you do too. As a matter in fact this seems to be an epidemic that occurs at a national level. We go through the motions of the day without much thought, emotion or appreciation. Sometimes life just get so busy and stressful that it rob us of joy and contentment. When this happens to me it leaves me wishing that the week would just be over already. I am tired of being a ghost drifting through life. It is time to wake up and enjoy life to the fullest.

Joy and gratitude are things that should be expressed every single day, because too often we take the time we have for granted. I recently found out that someone close to our family, who is only 21 years old, only a few years older than us has cancer. His prognosis is only 6 months-3 years. Life is unpredictable and it isn’t always fair, but there is one thing for sure, life is short.

On the other end of the age spectrum we have my grandma who is 92 years old. Ninety two years sounds like a very long time, it is but it only a small blip of time in the grand scheme of things. To help put this into perspective, the first recorded ancient civilization and language dates as far back as 3000-4000 B.C. and today is of the year 2016 A.D. That is about 5,000-6000 years, so 92 years isn’t much time. But my grandma is an unusual case, according to USA Today the average lifespan is about 78 years, even less time. With that being said our lives are too short to waste days away in misery or numbness. This life is all we have so we need to appreciate and enjoy it.

Anything and everything that we will do in this life will all be summed up in one little dash between our birthday and some future date on our tombstones. The people we meet, the lives we touch, our impact on the world, the family we have, the house we live in, the college we will go to, our legacies and lives all summed up in a tiny little dash. We need to make that dash count.

A lifetime is an accumulation of days in weeks, months and years. We should take advantage of everyday and not just move through the motions or wait for the future to come. If you do you will eventually look back and realize that you have just let life slip by. I am guilty of this. I have been so focused on growing up and getting through high school that I have overlooked spending time with my siblings, and now I just realized that these are the few last weeks that we will all be together. I want to appreciate every day with them as the days dwindle down. I want to grow old in an America where we remember to slow down, and appreciate where we are and who we are with in each moment.

Now to put that into practice.

Junior year has also flown by so quickly, and this has by far been my best high school year ever. I might have gone through the motions for a couple days this year, or maybe a couple of months. But now I intend on being fully present and I look forward to these last couple of classes together listening your guy’s speeches about what matters to you. Thank you for the wonderful year. As a token of my appreciation and gratitude for each of you and our time together, I have kisses for all of you.


 * Sources **

__ [] __ [|__http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/08/us-life-expectancy-hits-record-high/16874039/__] [|__http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evolution%20Hoax/recorded_history.htm__]