I graduated from college yesterday... and I've been thinking.
When I graduated from highschool, our commnnencement ceremony was in the middle of a school week. That made it a bit of a joke because they were telling us that we had graduated, but we had to go to school the next day...
My college graduation is similar. Because of the nature of my program, I have to continue my flight training through the summer. I do get a week off, but it was hard to take them seriously when I knew that I was going bak to class in a few days to work on my classes for this degree that they said I had just completed.
Now to be clear, I am happy about my graduation, and I am proud of my achievements, but I find it funny when they tell me I'm done when I know that I'm not. It also makes me think about the illusion of completion.
Of how many things can we truly say ''I'm done''? Sure, I'm done a road trip, but when am I done my education? These days our global knowledge doubles regularly, in a few years it is believed that it will double daily. Now I don't know if that will really happen, but up to today, the rate of the doubling of our knowledge is growing exponentionaly. I suppose we will have to wait and see.
So if we don't complete education, what do we complete? A job? When the contract for my last job came to an end, I said ''I'm done'' at least three times, my boss kept asking me to do one more odd job. Of course, some people can mark diffinitive ends to their jobs, but I would argue that even just thinking about the job means that it's not actually over.
So neither education nor employment have a diffinitive completion, but couldn't we say that life does have a completion? Again, I would argue that even the line that marks the end of life is blurred. I distinctly remember when I was talking to some friends of mine about death. One of them was a firefighter and the other a nurse. The nurse defined death as the moment when mind activity and the heart stops. The firefighter defined death as ''when the doctor says he's dead''. Both are right in their own fields, yet both are very different. The nurse's definition can have occured, but as far as the firefighter is concerned, the man is still alive. So who's right? what's more, with modern medicine we can bring people back to life! (Albeit, only sometimes) So someone's dead, and then they're alive again. So this person's life is done, then their back! again, we've encountered the illusion of completion.
So the idea of completing something is just an illusion, most any author I've ever met will agree with me in regards to their writting, but I think I've shown that it expands even farther.
If you disagree with me, let me know, I'd love to talk, I'm not sure I agree with myself either.
