If I ever make my way into heaven, God and I need to have a serious conversation about one thing: Why did I spend so much of my life terrified? I was told around February that I’d be required to do the keynote address at the senior-prize giving, and as a result, I spent months agonizing and freaking out. Who am I to tell young people about anything? What have I achieved that is so spectacular? When my own life is still so messy, what value can I add, really?
For weeks I consulted with friends and the night before the prize-giving my best friend and I spent the whole night discussing what would be ‘appropriate’ as the keynote address. I had my own ideas, but I honestly didn’t know if they would be of any value to the students. The one thing I thought was quite cool would be to speak to ‘My 17 year-old self’. I could relate to her, I knew how she thought and I could remember her dreams and fears.
But 2 weeks prior to the prize-giving I’d listened to Power FM where this 16 year-old girl was working on ‘forgiving herself’ because in the past 2 years she’d slept with more than 10 sugar-daddies. I was stunned! What if this is what young people needed to be advised on, I had no frame of reference since I was a virgin until my final year of varsity. But what if my role was to help these young women, how do you say: ‘Well, at 16, I didn’t think sleeping around was a good idea, but if you think it is, I can tell you for free that it isn’t.’ Having gone through high-school as a geek, there’s a lot that I honestly don’t relate to. I didn’t drink, didn’t have sex and didn’t miss a single day of school from Grade 8 to Matric (Stru!). I’d been a nervous wreck from February, wondering what it was that I could really say to change the lives of young people (not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination).
Then I got onto that stage, a very familiar stage I’d had to stand on throughout my year as head-girl. Secondly I put on my blazer, the same blazer I’d worn every day (including weekends when I had to attend all 1st team rugby games) for a whole year. Then suddenly it all fell into place. I wasn’t here as some expert on a foreign subject, I was here as myself, to be myself.
Firstly, I know Linpark. I sat in those seats as a 17 year old with insanely wild ambitions. I also knew what it took for me to survive. So, as terrified as I was, I got on that podium, and spoke MY truth.
1. Grown ups don’t have this whole life thing figured out, they’d like to think they do but they don’t. So every time your gut tells you that despite what the grown ups are saying, your truth is different, listen to that voice.
2. Don’t let small minds convince you that your dreams are too big. You are limitless. Your brain and your potential are like nothing the world has seen before.
3. It’s all up to you. You’re the boss of your life and your future. The difference between winners and losers is that winners own their choices (failures and victories) whilst losers always have someone to blame. If you want to become a winner, realize one thing: It’s all up to you. Winners find a way, losers find an excuse.
4. Coming from LHS is not a curse. This place will prepare you for life. In life, people will judge you on the colour of your skin, people will undermine your self-worth, people will tell you who you are. But if you’re from Linpark, you will have had to deal with that already. You will have spent years battling with who you know yourself to be, versus who they say you are. So, take the lessons from here, and make them work in your favour. Life is not Christmas, and the sooner you realize that the sooner you will be equipped to deal with it.
5. Know who you are, because if you don’t, the world will decide for you. People who don’t know who they are find themselves caught up in peer-pressure, abusive and exploitative relationships etc. When you know who you are, there are things that happen around you that you know for a fact you’re not participating in. But when you haven’t taken the time to do your homework and ask yourself ‘who am I’, then you get tossed around by the current. Whatever is cool, whatever your friends are into, whatever is easy... you flow with it.
6. There’s more to life than chasing meaningless fun. You’re young, you want to be seen as cool, but you must realize that after all is said and done, life is about more than just getting laughs for your jokes in class, more than just telling your teacher off in order to score points with your peers. Teachers will get paid despite how you (mis)behave. You don’t behave for their benefit, but for your own. Life demands that you respect it, or it will teach you respect the hard way. Those of us who respected books, can now buy our mothers Mercedes because we respected the fundamentals. Respect life and it will reward you for it.
What I wish I could have imparted on LHS students is a sense of ownership. I am one of you, I sat where you sit, and I contended with the same battles that you are. But what has served me most is a sense of ownership for my own life. I’m not a victim of circumstance, I’m not inferior because of my background, I’m the ‘BOSS’ of my own destiny. I shared HHP’s song: ‘Bosso ke mang’ and re-iterated the fact: It all starts and ends with you!
Between that there were anecdotes of my own experience of high-school, bits of what I’ve been up to in the past 13 years, and also some reflections on what it means to be young.
2 weeks later, I’m still revisiting the speech and wondering what else I could have added, what more I could have said. But in my spirit I’m content that if I had sat in that audience as a 17 year old, those are the words I would have liked (and needed) to hear.
Maybe there was more that I said that I now can’t remember, my greatest prayer on the day was that I speak to the legitimate needs of my audience, as my favourite prayer goes: ‘Not from me, but through me.’ I can’t claim that it was perfect, but I can honestly say that it was authentic.
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