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"What do you want to be?"
How many times have we heard that? Friends, relatives, ministers and even teachers throw out the question and usually laugh at our idealistic replies, unless (horrors) we declare that we don't really know. To have no goal in life implies that we are lazy and very unappreciative of all the grown-up generation have done for us. I think that it is generally true that young Canadians have trouble deciding about their future. True, some frankly prefer to stay in school as long as they can before they join the T.T.C. or become a junior clerk. Others, however, feel almost an obligation to do some- thing 'worthwhile' in their life. Our government tells us that, if we get a good education we are helping our country and the world. This allows many teenagers to follow the crowd to U.of T. and get their B.A. It is a well-known fact that the B. A. alone is worth precious little. Unfortunately, teenagers are |
sometimes ill-advised, or not advised at all about their
future. The decision, then is completely ours.
Contrary to the traditional belief, if you feel that you wish to do something 'worth-while' with your life, that does not mean that you have to be a martyr. If you are not satisfied with yourself, how can you help others be satisfied ? Thus, it is important to choose a career that you truly want; not the career that doesn't involve Maths., which means you must study Latin, not the career that 'fits' you, not the career with the scholarships and the fancy degrees. The ideal way to decide about your future is to spend a summer at the sort of job that interests you. Follow that dream, yes, but don't be foolish enough to follow blindly. What do you want to be? Think it over. After Grade 13, the question will be, "What do you do?" - - And will you be satisfied with your answer. - - Joan Robertson, 12A |
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Life in our very "un-finite" world is really
a wry little joke played on us by some nasty
deity, and our carefully reasoned philosophies
are only as firm as quicksand. Thus it is that
our almost worshipful reliance on these creations
of our own minds causes most of our
conflicts and sor:ows.
An opinion is born when an individual organizes an assortment of facts into a formula which has a familiar click in his mind; this formula he calls logic. But let us recognize the diverse, conflicting results that logic can produce, also bearing in mind that most kinds of facts are assumptions. It is logical to be patriotic to one's country in time of war , especially if one's country purports to be a democracy and faces, for example, an enemy such as Hitler. It is also logical that killing is wrong. Should we then fight in war or surrender to a force which will certainly suppress any chance of democracy ? Consider another example. It is logical for Negroes to be free; it is also logical to prevent suicide -- for who is to give or take life, even his own? And these two logical conclusions conflict, in consideration of recent American Negro actions. Knowing, surely, that their |
demonstrations, however peaceful
on their part, would arouse violence from some
segregationists, did the Negro leaders have
the right to go ahead? Though perhaps the
Negroes who died might have been willing to
do it, should they have been allowed to sacrifice
themselves? This argument seems a small
bone to pick in the face of the general good
which recent Negro actions have done their
movement, but I wonder whether good or bad
can be measured in lives and human suffering.
The doubt lingers.
You may protest now that logic is still essential to human beings, that otherwise everything becomes meaningless floating chaos -- and of course you are right. In human nature there is a paradox which decrees that we can not find any absolute standards of right and wrong, good and bad, yet we must always try to anyway. We must therefore use our minds in observing as much as we can of life, just as we study techniques and history to look intelligently at art, but we must not make irrevocable judgements. That joke of life on us makes it easier, in this so-called finite world, to believe in the Infinite. - - Sara Chu, 12B (Co-Editor) |