personally, ive been struggling a lot lately with the concept of modern life. the whole idea of going to school, so you can experience more school, to get a job to provide for yourself and your family. you see, teenagers like myself cant philosophize about these notions, because we are written off as being lazy. im not trying to blame society, its not their fault. however, im not considering a change in the fabric of civilized life, simply because i dont feel like doing my math homework. no, ive seriously been considering the point of it all. whats the point in going to high school? to get into a good college, of course. and the point of college? well for graduate school, obviously. and graduate school? to get a good job, and (finally) to provide for your family and pass wealth and prosperity onto your offspring, so that they may have the best possible chance in completing the never-ending cycle. this is average life. this is what the majority of people call accomplishment. and i have no idea why. if humans were designed to simply keep on reproducing, then we're no more sophisticated than a rabbit. granted, the purpose of human life is a question that will most likely never be answered, but i doubt its as simple as to 'continue existing'. lets take a moment to consider a scenario. Let's say life forms in another galaxy evolved to the point where they could travel the stars. during their travels, they would come across earth and see that the planet had a vast amount of resources for that species to utilize. if the captain of that ship was given the task of studying the life on earth, and determining whether or not it was worthy of continuing its existence, what would he see? the magazines with the headlines 'shes anorexic again' or the works of William Shakespeare? would that captain see a reality tv show depicting life on the jersey shore, or the paintings of Vincent can gough? the value of human existence balances on the blade of a knife. with all our inappropriate absurdities; our unnecessary violence; and our detrimental acts upon the planet which houses us, we also take the funny little oddities homo sapiens have invented whose beauty can't quite be explained. if that captain reads a few lines of poetry from Walt Whitman, will he understand why the words written by a single man years ago will transcend time, war, and death; living on as far as we will let it? with all my heart, i believe humans have an essence of life that cant be cloned. It cant be described, mass produced, or simply thrown away. it is the quintessential component of our being; the flow, rhythm, and enigma of what we are that drives us to keep aiming for the stars. so the reason i dislike school but love education is simple: school is bottling up the substance of humanity and telling you how well you paid attention. education, on the other hand, starts with being handed a map of the universe and being asked, 'wanna see something cool?'. its being bored with one subject and turning to one that lights up your eyes and makes you want to change the world. so the conclusion i have drawn is that the point of going to school, college, graduate school, and getting a job is to show yourself what the average person does. then, its taking the first chance youve got, looking deep into the depths of the ocean or space; the pattern in numbers or stanzas; the arrangement of molecules or colors, and showing the world that the point of it all, is you.