My Graduation Speech at Ningbo Barstow Hign
My dear teachers and parents, my lovely fellow class of 2020, it’s my great honor here to speak as a student representative, and thank you for choosing to join today’s graduation ceremony.
You know, it might be the last time you see most of your surroundings, your classmates, your teacher. I mean, you would not even get in touch with them anymore. Maybe in the near future, you would call them, you would Wechat them, but as long as your life track does not match with them, then eventually you guys would go apart.
20,000 days, this is the number of days you last in this world, have you figure out who you are yet? And what’s “you” even mean? Are you still you if you lose your arms, or your legs? If you have a third level burn, and loses your original skin and look, are you still you? And actually the human cells in your body would be fully replaced for seven years, are you just the physical body? Well, yes, but no. You see, if we beginning to rip off your body parts when you stop being you? If I replace your brain with other’s brains, would this body still be considered as you? I don’t think so.OK, brain, if we say the brain is you, then what is it? Can two random babies grow with the exact same experience have the same consciousness? Can two same babies with exact brain structure grow with different experiences have the same consciousness? Obviously not, so how about two babies with exact brain structure grow with the exact same experience? Yes, they definitely would. You are the current consciousness which is the combination of your brain structure and the memory.
According to the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated system always increases. Which implies one day our universe would be completely homogeneous, or same everywhere. This also implies no one could reverse the process because the information has already lost. Our entire existence will be nothing, and cannot even be tracked. What we live for? What do we want? What is the goal? What is the fuel that drives your existence?
Our life, or our consciousness, is about making choices, it is a very general idea, which includes which eye you gonna blink in the next second, to the college experience you choose to have. There is a standard that helps us make decisions, a feeling that we expect to get, or we can call it happiness. Happiness here is not about emotional feelings like “fun”, “chill”, or “relax” that are typically positive. It is a general thing we expect to get after choosing to do a thing. We want happiness, this is the only goal, and the only fuel keeps us burning. Let’s have an example: you choose to save another person by sacrificing yourself, then you choose to do so is just because you expect to get more happiness by doing so, and that’s it.
Happiness is the only reason, we at any moment are choosing the one we expect could bring us more happiness, So you cannot blame the past you, you are always making the best decision you think.
Our universe might be started with a simple parameter, and theoretically could be calculated. Does that mean we do not have a free willing? Is our destiny a sure thing? Yes, but no. It is true that our universe could be calculated, but only the universe itself could have such huge computing power to do so, so when we talk about prediction, it is actually the real-time calculation.
Shamefully, even every time we made the choice we expect to bring us more happiness, but it still not coming. The problem is, many people do not have a clear and clean choosing standard. Do you understand who you are? What do you want? So-called the feeling of guilt, confusion, and regret, are all because there is no long term goal. But if you have, then it is OK to offense people, or be offended. You would not regret about short-term failures, and you would not be confused immediately after making choices. Once you have the standard, every choice you made is the trajectory regression towards that target, maybe the instant happiness does not come, but every adjustment is bringing you out from that comfort zone dragging you down.
Above are my answer to: “Who I am?” “ Where am I?”, and “Where am I going to?”
So, my schoolmates, my speech is over, your new life is beginning–please answer, hope you all could make the right choice.