Funny Little Love

Is This Seat Empty?...

60

ALEX

"That was a very interesting speech about how tolerance leads to the downfall of society, Dave. Really makes me think about how I should make it a rule from next time to get all the speeches approved by me before they go public." Ms. Abrams, the school counselor's says through the microphone with a weird smile on her face while glaring at Dave who is by now, standing in front of the stage with his back towards us.

Thank God, Dave's not speaking.

I'm surprised nobody started throwing bottles at the stage because a few minutes more of that and I sure would have thrown some bottles myself.

"Sorry about that to anyone who felt a bit uneasy about having a future KKK recruit among us." Ms. Abrams says with her weird smile that she's forcing onto her face.

There is a collective humming sound from the audience followed by a few scattered laughs.

"Next up we have someone who is a whole lot more interesting and would probably make you feel better. He is an exchange student from England and it's frankly quite a surprise that he chose to graduate from here instead of his school in London. He is also the highest scorer in this school for the year and hence, is worthy of talking to you about working hard and inspiring you. Please welcome, Cain from England." Ms. Abrams announces.

I laugh.

His name is not Cain from England.

A loud sound of clapping in the audience erupts.

I clap too.

Mrs. Hoffmann, Lizzie, my mom and I are sitting in the third row.

A seat beside me lies empty.

I kept it for Shawn.

I forgot that he is one of the highest scorers and being one of the highest scorers he has to sit at the front with all the teachers, the nerds who think they're smarter than Einstein and the hot nerds like Cain.

He is the only student in the front row who is the captain of the soccer team and also a high scorer and also popular.

I know my boy is precious.

I can't say the same about me.

I probably would never get into NYU if I wasn't good at dancing and didn't have sponsors.

Cain walks up the stairs onto the stage and comes to a stop when he reaches the microphone mounted on a stand at the front of the stage.

He lets out a visible huff.

"I'm not really good at speeches but I've been looking forward to this one. I have known most of you here and most of you have known me for only an year now. I've been in this school for only an year now yet I've come to love this place so much that I decided to graduate from here as a native student and not an exchange guy. I always expected one year of high school here to be quite a predictably interesting adventure, but it has been far more interesting than I had predicted. This past year helped me grow a lot and as I graduate out of this high school today into the world, I'm happy to say that this has been one of the greatest experiences of my school life." Cain says through the microphone.

I cheer him with a lot of others in the audience.

"About hard work, there seems to be this misconception about how hard work is just to prove our worth to society, our parents in some cases and sometimes to ourselves. That's false. It's about fulfilling our own sense of purpose on a daily basis with small goals. I have been fixating on the future for a long time before I realized that it doesn't really exist. We can plan for as long as we want but none of them eventually work if we don't make a place for the present in those plans. The more we think we have control over the course of events in your future, the more we work to prove ourself and that vision to someone else who we are not really supposed to prove ourselves to and before we know it, we are working for somebody else and not ourselves, even beyond our conscious extent. We notice we're not in a symbiotic framework in which we're working for ourselves and for the cause for some mutual benefit. We become a slave of a narrow vision of the future which is not necessarily the best that can happen to us. How can we broaden that vision? Living in the present. We can have a clear idea of what we want while still having no idea what the future could be like. That is exactly what happens. We never truly know what the future could be like. We know what we want, but we never know the future. Hence, we have no other choice but to live in the present and to see everything, even the future in terms of the present. That's how we get hard work to not be tiring but important and fulfilling and powerful." Cain says.