... and it was time for students to start doing their math tests or “Measure of Academic Progress.” It’s a test you take at the beginning and end of each year. It’s a wonderful idea to not take seriously. All these ... [Audio cuts out] ... sweaty faces and study hard, but not this year. So I walk into class, sit down on my desk, and breeze the thing like in 20 minutes, guessing all the questions. Can you guess what happened? That’s right, I got the best score in the entire grade. But that didn’t actually happen, it was the worst score of Amman. It was safe to say that I wasn’t a genius for doing that. And that’s what the speech is about: my stupidity, my mistakes, and what I’ve learned from taking things just a little too seriously. So first, I want you to think about yourself, specifically, the deeper parts of your mind. The part that hates, the part that dreads, and the part that frightens you. That’s the loveliest part of your heart, the most beautiful. I call it your darkness or your shadow. It makes up your insecurities, your anxieties, frustration. The shadow can affect you in so many ways and change what you do. And sometimes it takes a turn for the worst. Now, this shadow it’s hungry, it’s very hungry, and it feeds upon your negative emotions. I want you to visualize this. Slowly, it grows and grows, bit by bit, until it takes full control your body and you end up doing drugs. When your shadow takes the wheel, all rational thinking is shoved into a suitcase and thrown out the window. You end up doing things you regret. What kinds of things can a child do? Well, let’s say you start to worry too much. You try to be perfect in whatever you do. You become too afraid to be proud of yourself and instead focus your energy on negative talk as a replacement for motivation. You ignore the signs that your mental health is degrading, ignore the signs that maybe this isn’t as big of a deal as you think it is, and you ignore the signs that, in reality, you shouldn’t care. Another side effect of the shadow, I guess something everyone can relate to, is getting offended when your friends make fun of you. Of course, I’ve been made fun of a lot. That should be quite obvious. I started to notice that when you overreact to these jokes you train yourself to interpret everything everyone does towards you as negative. You think that your friends hate you when they’re texting rude, which, guess what, harms your mental health and feeds this shadow of yours. There’s all these times when being serious can increase the negativity in your life. When things around you are negative, you’re stressing yourself out in important situations, you ask, “Well, how can I stop this?” And, honestly, I have no clue. But I do have a proposal. This shadow feeds off negative energy, right? It eats up your bad feelings and spits them out as things that are even worse. What if there’s a way to stop that? Technically speaking, if you limit the amount of food he eats, you starve him out. That’s when being serious comes into play. Seriousness, I’ve mentioned it before. But what is it? What is being serious to you? A part of your personality, a part of your work, or it can be a decision you make. When you do your homework, you’ve got to be serious. When you’re designing a bridge, you’ve got to be serious. When you’re writing a speech, you’ve got to be semi-serious, right? Being serious is the decision to focus hard and try your best without distraction. And here’s the interesting stuff. When you’re serious, two things happen: you become more productive and you get more work done. But you can also allow a build-up of negative emotions. It can come from stress, frustration, anger, anything that makes you feel bad. On the other hand, you have the times when you aren’t so serious. You get lazy and don’t do any work. But suddenly, all these negative emotions don’t seem to matter anymore, because you don’t care. So by deciding to be serious or not, you have slight command over these negative emotions that affect your life. Which means, as you guessed, you have the power to influence yourself. And with great power, comes great responsability. You don’t have control over what you feel, it’s unpredictable, but you can control the physics of these emotions. If you start being less serious, there’s the good and the bad. The good is you have a less likely chance of letting the shadow take over because you choose not to care about the things that make you more stressed. Of course, you can’t always not take things seriously. Tests and grades are things that could affect your life in many ways. What about the things that don’t? Why work hard and get stressed over something you don’t know will make you happy? Because that’s the goal, right? To live life, to be happy. I’m not encouraging you to not be serious. I’m encouraging you to think about why you should. I’m not a master at this, I still got tons of stuff to learn. But I’ve realized it’s a necessary skill to know when to care and when to let go. You’re getting mad over a guy who didn’t call back. I know, it’s painful, but why are we serious about it? You wanna ask your crush out on a date but worry you’ll get rejected? Why push yourself for a cause that you don’t know will make you or others any happier? Because that’s what I would say. Don’t take life too seriously. You never get out of here alive. Those previous examples of mine, especially the tests, are severe cases of what I’m describing. Frankly, there are times when you can take things just a little too jokingly. When it comes to everyday life and occurrences that don’t affect you, like acing a test or an offensive joke, or the thought of needing to be perfect, for your own sake, chill out. So what I mean by stop being serious is stop overthinking the little things. Appreciate and understand your emotions. If you never allow yourself to not be serious, you won’t be happy because the shadow is the one driving.
