This Is Life

I have worried over the course of this year that these president’s messages were not substantive enough and represented a bit of a cop out, since I have gravitated toward 1990s song lyrics and simple observations to convey ideas. During the last couple of months, however, I have received a nice response regarding these messages, so I figured I would finish out the year in the same fashion. By “nice response,” of course, I mean that of the hundreds of people who might read these messages, approximately four of them have given me positive feedback. But I take what I can get ;-)

I often think to myself that a school year, like life itself, might be represented by a graph. There is an x axis, a y axis, and a line. When the line begins at double zeros, we hope it moves up and to the right. We live on the end point of the line, and we want to blaze a smooth, diagonal, ascending path. It never materializes that way, though, and our line zigzags, at times jumping forward and at others declining abruptly. What is most challenging is that it is impossible to recognize the points of inflection until well after they happen. Bottoming out would be a lot easier if we knew it was bottom. But you don’t know the bottom until the trend in the other direction has taken form. 

School years zigzag. They might even dip into the negative. We do our best to hold the line and steer it upward and toward the right. And we try to keep inflection points and trends in perspective–they never represent an end. Thinking like this reminds me of a song I first heard in eleventh grade. It is not about math and graphs, but in my mind it is about appreciating the line and its creation in and of itself. The artist is Living Colour, whose name even smacks a little of what I just described. Congratulations on making it to the end point of another school year, and standing a little further up and to the right from where we started.

This Is the Life

In another life, you might have been a genius

In another life, you might have been a star

In another life, your face might have been perfect

In another life, you'd drive a better car

In another life, all your jokes are funny

In another life, your heart is free from fear

In another life, you make a lot of money

In this other life, everything is clear

In another life, you're always the hero

In another life, you always win the game

In another life, no one ever cheats you

In another life, you never have to change

In another life, your friends never desert you

In another life, you never have to cry

In another life, no one ever hurts you

In this other life, your loved-ones never die

But this is the life you have

This is the life

In another life, you're always the victim

In another life, you're always the thief

In another life, you are always lonely

In this other life, there is no relief

In your real life, treat it like it's special

In your real life, try to be more kind

In your real life, think of those that love you

In this real life, try to be less blind

This is the life you have