Two things before I answer this question. One - this question wasn't part of our Values Game during Orientation, nor was it in the packet containing all of the questions, so consider this my first original Values Game question. And I think it's pretty easy to see why I'm posting it; everyone has a favorite quote, but it's why that makes it so meaningful. It's that distinction to only you that makes those words so special. Two - Explosions in the Sky is horribly beautiful to listen to. It almost always makes me think. Not even about anything in particular. I can focus on my homework while listening to them, or I can type out words that seem to have effortless flow while listening to a song I discovered as recently as today.
As far as my favorite quote, I have two of them. One about quotations themselves, and one about life.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ironic bliss in this quote is pretty easy to see, but the depth behind it is amazing. Like I said before, we all have a favorite quote (or two). We all have a favorite song, or poem, or saying, or whatever. But what we have to say is more important. What our values are, instead of the values we take on from what we see between the quotation marks. The words we produce ourselves, instead of copying and pasting them from someone else. Sure, they may have said it better. But how do you say it? And with that, my second quote:
"Life is nothing until it is lived, but it is yours to make sense of; the value of life is nothing other than the sense you choose." -Jean-Paul Sartre
Unfortunately, Sartre did say it a hell of a lot better than I did, and in way fewer words. And if that sounds familiar, you're probably thinking about my meaning-of-life post, my last post of my freshman year at Stonehill, sitting on the stone wall outside Martin, facing the residence hall where I spent some of the most important months of my life. The value of our lives really is the set of values that we create based off what we surround ourselves with. The people in our life, the love we share with others, the ties we establish, and the memories we create. And none of that comes from quotes. Sure, we can read a quote and start believing in it and living by those quotes, but ultimately, this is our life. Create your own quotes to live by.
Now that I can take a deep breath, I'm going to have to think about this blog post in the months to come. By which I mean, I'm going to have to find a way to condense this into the five seconds I have to answer should this question come up during next summer's Orientation.
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