End of the year Yearbook Entry - Need your advice, opinions, suggestions, anything!

I will be graduating from High School next year in 2013, but I want to prepare a good first draft of my yearbook entry (very early, as you can see . You see, each Punahou School senior is allowed a whole page in the yearbook to say whatever they want to their classmates.

Here's a rough draft of what I was planning to say (posted below all this background context).
It's based on Joseph Campbell's 6 myth lectures - lectures that I REALLY enjoyed and wrote extensive journals about. He is so wise and gentle and mature, which is why I wanted to base my yearbook entry on what I learned from his teachings.


Please...

- Read it over (at least)
- Comment! on anything you thought about it. ANY thought, interpretation, likes, dislikes, etc.
- Suggest! what I should add, change, or remove. You are even welcome to rewrite it and show me how you'd write this - if you feel so inclined to do so!
- Criticize! anything that contradicted Joseph Campbell's meanings; anything that wasn't worded right; anything that's conceptually wrong, etc.
- Praise! anything that you felt was excellent about my entry. (Thank you!)

- and Anything! you want to say! {Just no profanity, and no useless silliness (I'm taking this very seriously} since that's usually very annoying.)

To my 2013 Peers,
You have all been worthy classmates, helpers, acquaintances, allies, and friends. Even though I never talked to all of you, I am definite that you each have had a unique and significant life here at Punahou - a story that defines you and will go into your ever-growing foundation as you approach post-high school education and careers. I wish to offer some type of advice to you all. However, I am your peer and equal, so there really isn’t much that I should so boldly advise you to do.

All I suggest is to continue exploring new ideas, methods, and education. Always continue to better yourself; never give up this endeavor.

For the past 1.5 years, I studied philosophy online, and learned a few interesting concepts.

There are two main existences: the reality and the cosmos. All of us are familiar with our reality: the location for the obvious, the literal, the structured and the humanized - our physical world. However, many don’t think about the cosmos. Many of you might not even know what that is. The cosmos is the opposing existence to reality, and is the abstract location for the interpretative, the metaphorical, the unstructured, and the unfamiliar ideas that transcend past our flawed and crude human thought. Moreover, the cosmos is the abstract and unreal location for all other existences that have not been discovered, proven, or understood by our flawed and crude human thought. You see, there can exist new ideas and concepts that no human being has discovered or understood, simply because these ideas can’t be understood and can’t be physically sensed. We are sometimes able to recognize the tip of these cosmic concepts, calling them “mysteries”, and try to explain them through language and the arts. However, we are often blocked before we discover too much. Moreover, we all use language and art to express ourselves, ideas about the physical reality, and ideas about the abstract cosmos. However, these are all very limited forms of expression and, unfortunately, they are all we got. For example, we assign certain words to express certain basic and universal ideas - “thank you” to express appreciation and respect, and “I’m sorry” to express regret, compassion, and restoration, etc. - all very basic and humanized thoughts. So while I would certainly like to convey unto each of you a much broader, sophisticated, and complete meaning, I think it would be sufficiently appropriate merely to say,

Thank you extremely much.

Wow!! A whole page for you to write in!!! :ohmy: I wish my high school would have done that for my class!! :laugh:
While I have downloaded Joseph Campbell's videos and things i sadly have not had a chance to watch them -- studying for finals and getting ready to do my internship and all :woohoo:
I did read what you wrote and found it to be very interesting. And I did enjoy it very much. There isn't a thing I myself would change

Good Luck with your last year of high school!!

May The force Be With You

I would try to use more layman's language to break down what reality is versus the cosmos. Which, admittedly, is hard given the content being expressed, but I feel otherwise it may put off some peers from reading it out of intimidation or a habit of correlating big words with boring.

I really like the theme of your entry- words cannot accurately convey the gratitude I have for you all. The ending was perfect.

It's true that many of my classmates would probably dismiss my entry - seeing big words and automatically labeling it "boring".

In general, it's a little sad how superficial many people can be. (I necessarily digress) For example, I have certain family members that constantly talk about their business 24/7, their profits, and their availability of workers, etc. I have friends who only talk about anime or sex.


For a while, I've been troubled by the direction of amorality the "crowd" of people have been heading over - something I describe as a "spreading amoral illness".

And the fact is, we really can't do anything about this trend. As aspiring Jedi, we can only directly improve ourselves and make suggestions to our peers, but we can't "fix" people. The government can't "fix" people....and I don't think they should either.


Anyway, thank you, Hypatia and Amayilia, for your compliments! I was expecting some major criticism (there are quite a few very "critical" members here at TOTJO), and I was surprised to see two compliments.
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New Readers - please follow the instructions at the top of this post and read this journal entry. Thanks!

The only thing I would suggest is that you break up the long paragraph

Walls of text are intimidating and tedious to read when you're confronted with them

Other than that it's good

I know you know this, but I am going to say it anyway...

Its best in your own words....

Although I agree with Akkarin, a wall of text can be intimidating, as you can see by my posts, I break them up all the time...

Simple is best.. however, is less words written (using big words), or more words written (using smaller words), less? Lol...

I try to convey to everyone I meet, in every discussion and chance I get, that they are the hero in their life's story, and it is up to them to make good, conscious decisions....

My kids say, "daddy build with me", so i sit down to build... Soon, I'm building this great big, towering castle... Instead of having fun, I've tried to make the build "more fun", which failed when by adding more blocks, took away from the imagination... My child soon bores of our game, and goes to entertain himself with a cardboard box... lol, cause I haven't ruined that yet...

People don't want taught, they want entertained....

So if you can teach/explain/enlighten in an entertaining way, this is the way to get them to pay attention...

Oh, look... juggling!

Haha, very funny Master Jestor.

(Again, I digress) I've always noticed that you put many periods after each thought - it has become your writing style that has defined you here on the forums and in private messages.

You have always reminded me of Eeyore! (from Winne the Pooh)