By Diego Campbell If you’ve ever heard of Harry Potter, read any Dr. Seuss’ book, or looked at the Senior pages of your high school yearbook, then you’ve heard of quotes that will make you laugh, cry, or explain a hard concept about the world in ten words or less. Quotes are phrases from a work, author, or statement that carry some weight in their meaning. You typically want to have a good quote ready if you have a chance to say the last word in a party, if you are stuck in a strongly worded argument, or if you have to give some secret code to get into a party to win a strongly worded argument. Since we have made it to the end of our metaphorical party (the school year), I wanted to leave off on a good note with some solid last words. After all, “the hardest goodbyes are the ones that were never said and never explained, the ones where the story wasn’t over” (Virginia Brown). So I’m going to try my best and make this whole goodbye thing a little easier for all of us with these Final Words of Wisdom. “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” (Dr. Seuss). It can be a sad day when something we’ve been a part of ends, and we know there’s no going back. It can be easy to wallow in sadness because we can never relive the nostalgia. But that honestly sounds like a rotten way to live the rest of your days. Instead, Dr. Seuss says it best; smile because it happened, and because you got to enjoy it at all. “Don’t ever tell anyone anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” (J. D. Salinger). This is a bit of a joke quote. If we don’t talk to people, we can’t form relationships with them that’ll make us miss them when we finally say goodbye. Of course, most people will go through life talking to at least one person, so it’s obvious this quote is impossible to follow to the letter. But besides the laugh, it’s also a reminder that we will have to say goodbye to everyone we meet. This quote is a double edged sword that cuts with comedy and solemnity. Goodbyes are inevitable, and we have to understand that so we can try to be ready when they come. “The two hardest things to say in life are hello for the first time and goodbye for the last.” (Moira Rogers). Every story has a beginning and an end. They can begin with a greeting and end in a parting phrase. It does not have to be the words “hello” and “goodbye”; it can be walking up and introducing yourself to your future best friends, or giving them a farewell hug as they board their plane back to their home country. The circumstances will never be the same for everyone, but they essentially boil down to hello and goodbye. It’s hard to be brave to come up and start that story; it’s almost impossible to be ready to let it end. But it’s that stuff in between, friendships, projects, highs and lows, etc, that make those hellos and goodbyes worth it. “Every beginning has an end and every ending is a new beginning.” (Santosh Kalwar). Similar to the phrase “when one door closes another door opens” this quote throws away the doors and keeps it plain and simple. Everything that starts will have an end; Science and religion both love to confirm this. But when something ends/finishes, we are left with something new. It could be the aftermath; it could be the next chapter in our lives. We have no guarantee that the next step forward will be better for us, but there’s an equal guarantee that it will be worse. The only thing we know for sure is that what happened was always going to end, and all that’s left ahead of us is new. There are many quotable phrases in the world, but I can’t keep fishing in the endless pond that is Google Images forever. I wanted to find quotes that could capture the feeling in someone’s heart in that moment when the ball drops and the part of their lives they’ve been living in is over. The basic TL;DR is that the time for farewells will always come, but it’s those goodbyes that help us realize what we’ve been through matters. I’ve been writing for The Halo for 2 years, making articles about news in the world, saints, things that I like, and the Praying Man comic series (which I finally gave a proper ending to, go check it out.) This will be my last article, so I wanted to say goodbye as best as I could. Winnie the Pooh says it best: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” (A. A. Milne). I say my goodbyes like I say my thank you’s. So thank you to Mr. Nelson and Mr. Spicer, who have taught the journalism class and who gave me a chance to write to my heart's content. Thank you to my fellow journalists in both years, who’ve written about stuff I never would have known about without their articles and who’ve been awesome classmates in general. Probably most important, thank you to you the readers, be you family, friends, or anyone who just so happened to click on our little school magazine for a quick read. Thank you for finding interest in our stories and for giving us the time of day.
I don’t know what’s going to happen now, but I hope you're as excited as I am to see what comes next. Signed, Diego Campbell
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
StaffPLearn more about the people behind the stories by clicking the button below. Archives
September 2023
Categories |