Summer+D’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

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=Text of Speech=

We are defined by the choices that we make. No matter if they are good or bad, the accumulative results of each and every choice that we decide to execute makes us the specific individual that we are today. No matter how humiliated or ashamed we may be because of a horrible outcome, “no man can walk out of his own story” //Rango.// Each and every one of us needs to take responsibility for their wise, or foolish decisions at some time or another. We may make decisions and think that they won’t hurt us, or anyone else in the long run, but later on we learn that we were deeply mistaken. We may make blurred choices that seemed good in the moment, but ultimately led to disastrous results. We may not experience the after math of a bad choice after the first time that we make it, but after making the same choice several times, one may come to realize this pattern has come to change everything about them; either for the good, or for the bad. What I wish to address today is a change in the way many of us, including myself, may look at life. Now, everyone thinks that the saying for “you only live once”, means that we should take the liberty in doing every outrageous, ridiculous, stupid, and crazy thing that gives us pleasure because we live only one life. Our generation seems to cling to this flawed principle as if gave us some sort of true fulfillment or experience; however, it never provides us with genuine satisfaction or pleasure. Many people in this world think that the choices that abide by this saying provide happiness, and that an individual’s happiness is all that really matters in this short life. Although a night of grinding, drinking, drugs, and loose morals may give many some temporary happiness, these kind of actions never produce a good outcome. The question that I wish to raise is this: Why are so many teenagers wasting their time doing so many stupid things that hinder their true potential? See, the goal in life is not about achieving absolute happiness by doing whatever you want; it’s about making life better for others as well as yourself, while conquering it’s obstacles with integrity, respect, responsibility, and humility. The phrase, “you only live once” should not be taken as a call to live solely for the moment; rather, it should be taken as a call to live for the long term, and to fight the good fight everyday with wisdom and character. My call for our generation today is to make fewer decisions based on lust and pleasure and to make more decisions based on morals, potential goals, and future hopes for the life to come. My call is for teenagers to stop wasting their talents as they waste themselves away with drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity, and to start living for something better; for a future that, with the application of hard work, discipline, and bravery, holds the promise of a bright future. But most of all, it’s a call to take hold of your talents and gifts, and to use them to not only impact your own life, but to also use them to impact the lives around you, and to show others what it truly means to live life to the fullest.

Now by no means am I telling all of you to live like robots and to do whatever your parents tell you to do as you trudge through these grueling high school years. In order to survive, and to have a healthy, multi-faceted life, we need to have fun and spend time doing activities that we love to do. By no means am I against having fun; I just don’t understand why we can’t have fun and be smart and responsible at the same time. It only takes one fatal mistake at a random party to ruin someone’s entire life. The story that I continue to hear over and over is the one of a young, naïve college or high school boy who takes on his friends to a drinking competition because he wants to impress his friends, and then gets drunk and passes out. His friends, not knowing what to do, throw him in a bedroom in a panic, and, thinking that he will sleep it off, leave him unattended. They then come back and find him dead as a result of severe alcohol poisoning. This is nothing short of wasted talent. A student who gets into drugs that one time and becomes a slave to addiction. Wasted talent. That young girl who spends her weekends with a new boy every week, earning for herself a ruined reputation and an empty heart. Wasted talent. A student who gives their school life up to be part of a “popular” group or gang which lives for destructive, temporary pleasures. Wasted talent. It’s one thing to make a bad decision, admit that it was bad, and fix it; it’s quite another thing to ignore it’s side effects and to allow it to become an active part of your life. When the decision to, for example (a milder example), procrastinate is made enough, it becomes a daily part of life, and it slowly starts effect the way a person values and uses their time, and instead of using their time to focus on homework, or other important things that need to be done, they choose to use their time to do other things, which could be positive, or negative. qqAs Cierra pointed out in her speech, there are so many people with physical disabilities, terminal illnesses, amputated limbs, and incomprehensible restrictions, such as being paralyzed or not being able to go outside because of a physical condition, that would do anything to have the life that we live. It makes me so angry to see so many people waste and ruin their lives with horrible choices. Why would you continue to live that life when you could be living for something better? It’s like choosing to live in the sewer when you could be living in a mansion. Every year, I go to Washington and I visit my brother’s physical therapy facility called ADAPT, and I see men and women entering the gym who are either paralyzed, or have missing limbs. They work with the main therapist their by the name of Jared, working hard to become some of the most intense beasts in the entire gym. A man paralyzed from the waist down doing an innumerable amount of pull ups; a woman without an arm or two working day in and day out to strengthen what she has, and being grateful and happy as she does it. Jared has no tolerance for training people that complain about how hard their designed workouts are. All day everyday he works with people who suffer greater pains and losses, and it disgusts him to see people whine about giving up during a rigorous workout when he is surrounded around people who defied defeat, and continue to conquer it with their attitudes, their determination, and their devotion to living life to the fullest; no matter what kind of disability they have.

It frustrates me to see so many people, my age, and above my years, choosing a life that throws their potential to the wind; with many not even glancing back at what they could have had. I would like to allude to a film that is very close to my heart; a film that has taught me a lot about love, life, and success. In //Good Will Hunting,// Chuckie talks to Will about what Will has been missing all his life. For those that haven’t seen the movie, Will Hunting, who plays Matt Damon, is a natural genius who takes a special interest in organic chemistry; solving some of the hardest equations known to mankind. All his life he chases after the temporary pleasures we see and experience today; sex, drugs, alcohol, and on top of that, he works at the most prestigious university in America as a janitor. His best friend friend Chuckie, who plays as Ben Affleck, finally confronts him about his lifestyle.


 * Will: What are you talkin' about?
 * [|Chuckie] : You got somethin' none of us have...
 * [|Will] : Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I frickin owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don't want to?
 * [|Chuckie] : No. No, no no no. Frick you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do frickin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these frickin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a frickin' waste of your time.

Every one of us has the potential to be so great, and so many of us, including myself, choose the lesser option. Procrastinating is my greatest weakness, and in a lot of ways, I have allowed it to define the way I live because of my laziness and failure to stay true to my work. Mistakes are part of life, but it is the way we respond and recover from mistakes that defines us. We are allowed to mess up, but in order to become successful, we must rise above our mistakes, admit our problems, and truly become dedicated to overcoming them instead of repeating them. And by no means am I saying that when someone majorly messes up, they no longer have a chance. It is the ones who choose to let their circumstances overcome them that set themselves up for something that is less than what they could be. If someone chooses to recover and move on from their disastrous mistakes, they become the greatest conquers of all. In the America that I hope to grow old in, I hope to see more people thinking and living for the future to come and less people choosing to partake in activities that provide minimal happiness and benefit. I hope to see people making mistakes while learning from them and making better choices that lift them out from the abyss that they may be in. I hope to see students believing that they are the hero’s of their own story, while realizing that their stories and journeys could impact the way others define their lives with their decisions. I would like to leave you all with one last quote from another inspirational film that has also influenced my life a great deal. In //A Bronx Tale,// [|Calogero 'C' Anello] says this:“The saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and the choices that you make will shape your life forever. But you can ask anybody from my neighborhood, and they'll just tell you this is just another Bronx tale.”

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