EDIT // I’m doing a Harry Potter Fundraiser with a friend by watching ALL the movies back-to-back. You want to support us and Action For Children? Then please, view the page and donate now.
It’s half way through the summer holiday of 2011, with 4 weeks remaining until I return to school, for the time-consuming, life-eating matinee of different pieces of work to do. When I go back, I’ll be faced with a term of learning relatively new things, which always entertains me more than other points, before I am thrown deeply into a slowly deepeningly stressful hole of continuing exams. Since the day school finished, the date you go back is intuned in your head and your mind won’t stop counting the time down. I have an endless list of things that I still need to do. They simply won’t get done.
Before I leave the topic of school, I recently found out from facebook that one of the teachers at my school had passed away from some form of cardiac arrest. It was so unusual and really gave me a shock. He was so young and his death left his wife and several young kids to live on without him. I was touched to find that the very next day, not only was there an email to everyone from the headteacher about him, but there was over 100 different facebook messages on a page dedicated to him. He was a valued member of our school, being boarding house staff and was known to always lighten the mood. I barely know what to add apart from that it is clear how much people respected and loved him from how many people were affected by his death. And I hope that the memorial service at school next term will do him justice.
It just goes to show how unexpected some things are. You should never assume that everything for you is going to be alright. You should prepare for the worst; expect the unexpected. I’m sure you understand this for yourself, but times like this really open your eyes to anything you’ve forgotten. Death has been close by me this year, taking my aunt, my teacher, my friend’s mother, my friend’s grandmother and just brushing by my friend with a brain tumor. Truly, my thoughts are with all their close family who have lost someone.
It also makes me wonder about the things you hear on the news. Admittedly, the news is going to be down-heartening, but when I hear about bombings (both explosives and petrol; in norway and london, etc) and shootings and other killings during whatever (riots, wars, etc), I remember all that I’ve seen of death. I remember watching family and friends in tears of whatever form at what has happened. So, I have many questions for the people who have that bomb in their hand, comtemplating throwing it. Have you not seen death? Do you not feel a compelling nature to stop it all now? How can you bear to hurt all these people? There are others, but you get the common theme of my questions. I just can’t understand, and don’t think I ever will, the urge to hurt others.
I’m going to leave it there. Value what you’ve got. And please don’t hurt other people, for whatever reason. Just remember that you always have the choice.