“Dad Used to Call Me Kaddish, So I Wouldn’t Forget”

Prior to his passing away just after my first year of high school, on June 13, 2012, my brothers, aunt, and I begged my dad to record his elongated, story-based answers to a series of questions from the book, To Our Children’s Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come, written by Bob Greene and D. G. Fulford. Just over four years later, I finally began to listen to it all, and in my search for memories, I discovered old text messages, interviews, photographs and more.

The following is the fruition of my own experience in listening, reading, reflecting, and believing:

A Look at My Remaining Years

The following is the editorial manifestation of my revisit, nearly a year later, to an old essay, "On My Forever Distant Future":

In my continued tenure at Haverford College, a liberal arts college in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, and beyond graduation, I shall forever persist in aspiring to glean knowledge and wisdom from the world around me, perpetually discovering bliss in both grappling with new ideas and the potential for more. I shall continue to challenge my preconceived notions of life itself, and I shall continue to deliberate over truth and morality in an academic sphere embracing intersectional and interdisciplinary study, in languages inclusive and transcendent of my mother tongue. In my remaining years, I hope to accept neither my current perspective nor that of my community as wholly correct or concretized; instead, I hope to forever alter both, forcing my life upon the path of an asymptote approaching divine understanding.

Reconsidering our Allegiance to Modern Social Technology

In Professor Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk, “Connected, but alone?” she grapples with the central paradox of the modern influx of social networking technology across nearly every living generation: what has originally assisted us in connecting with other people may ironically lead to the demise of our socialization altogether. Unfortunately, specifically in the Millennial generation, her contention about our seemingly unending use of cellphones and social media may be correct, and the repercussions of our reliance on technology as a substitute for genuine human connection may be catastrophic. Indeed, as its impacts transcend far beyond merely the avenues through which we send and receive basic information, our contemporarily proliferative use of social media may lead to such cruel ramifications as both decayed conversational skills and marred interpersonal relationships.

A Reflection on Now

In such a time of rapid changes, endings, and beginnings, I continue, for as long as I can, to repeat old customs (visiting teachers, still attending classes, extending my final goodbyes to my contrabassoon—and soon my bassoon, as well), and I slowly begin to grapple with the once-reverie of a new life style, a new community, and a newly strained network of friends from home, planning my future years partially to be a continuation of my last, only hoping that my goals and aspirations for college are those that I want due to their intrinsic value, rather than their mere resemblance of my old self, of the habits with which I've become comfortable. I hope that a break from this transition—my journey to work on an organic farming cooperative in southern France—will prove to provide me learning, "experience," and some guidance for my (hopefully successful) continuation of this transition, but, in fact, I'm consciously aware that these are only my desires, and that time's forward progression will be the only factor in truly determining how I choose to be. So, for now, I wait, delighting in the smiles and photos and hugs and final goodbyes I exchange, confident, unprepared, yet seemingly ready for whatever I face in the months and years ahead.

A Commencement Address to the Class of 2015

ON AN OTHERWISE EXHILARATING THURSDAY EVENING, after finally bidding the world my daily goodbye, I lay on my bed, writhing in excruciating pain of which I could only barely discern the origin.

After drudging through a 15-minute self-examination in my bathroom, I plodded, 10 steps in the hallway, until I reached my mother’s bed, on which I forced myself to lean, slowly moaning, “Mom, wake up… Mom, I twisted a ball.”

She looked at me, chuckling until she discovered the tears gliding across my unshaven face. Within minutes, she guided me into the Glenbrook Hospital Emergency Room Reception Center, where I waited for half an hour until a doctor could see me — apparently, someone had a cold. After three doses of morphine, 300 ultrasound images of my scrotum, and three hours of the most embarrassingly painful moment of my life, I lay unconscious on the operating table, opened up in ways I'd never before imagined, to form the most stressful moment of my mom’s life.

Without voicing too many details, all turned out well; I can still have children one day.

On My Forever Distant Future

In my years of life, I hope to forever persist in aspiring to learn all that I may glean from the world around me, without ever mistaking all that I have learned—even all that has been added to the knowledge bank of all of humanity—for all that there is to know, perpetually discovering bliss in both new ideas and the potential for more. At Haverford College, a liberal arts college in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia and my residence for the next four years, I will challenge my preconceived notions of life’s many mechanics, and I will grow from my constant deliberation over truth and morality, in the many realms of history; literature; peace, justice, and human rights; and art; all under the shades of world languages both inclusive yet nonexclusive to English. In my coming years, and for the rest of my life, I hope never to accept either my current perspective or my community at large as correct or concretized; instead, I hope to forever alter both, forcing my life upon the path of an asymptote approaching perfection.

On "True Learning"

On a crisp, Autumn day, I prance on the remains of fallen maple leaves covering cold, dry, brittle grass, as if I own the ground on which I presently reside. I, in my Mexican suede shoes, my Pakistani jeans, and my Bangladeshi shirt, attempt to elevate myself to an effervescent enlightenment. Before me were the Potawatomi and the Illini, but I dance on the beautifully gardened graves of anonymous "freedom fighters" because I understand no reason not to. One day, after many of burning OPEC-gasoline in what I consider to be significant endeavors, I will abandon my "home" to find a community of others like me: a society divorced from any America and any world, composed of people aching to discover truth to wield for their own desires in the communities from which they oh-so-recently escaped. I, inheritor of privilege, must live and die only to search for the never-changing boundaries by which I guide myself.