The Next Generation

One memory I wanted to record during my trip home over the summer was visiting my old high school with A-train. It was nice to see some old teachers again (namely the comp sci teacher and Miss Z) and I felt somewhat honored they even remembered us and some specific memories. Hundreds of students must have passed through their doors since we left and yet we were still able to leave some kind of impression on them.

But yet, what I was most struck by was how static everything seemed. Despite the churn of the outside world, Miss Z's classroom seemed almost exactly as I remembered it - the too-small desks arranged in neat rows, the assorted Shakespeare notes on the board and a messy desk strewn with copies of classic high school english novels. It felt both eerie and comforting at the same time especially given how sometimes I feel as if the world around me is always changing too fast - it's nice to know there are pockets in this world where things are relatively constant.

But are they? There's a famous quote that goes something like:

No man steps into the same river twice - because he will not be the same man and it will not be the same river.

This train of thought led me to another interesting observation which was that I seemed to have this egocentric mentality that my high school experience and my time there was relatively unique. As a consequence, once I left things would never be the same again. But, when I walked through those halls again, I saw a plethora of students jostling around me and realized that they were exactly the next generation. In some sense, the wheel never stops turning even after you think you leave something behind - the next generation is already waiting to follow in your footsteps or, more likely, forge their own. It made my own perspective feel relatively insignificant but it was also nice to think that we were all connected in some higher level way.

I remember a long time ago, Miss Z2 (my chemistry teacher) said something like "oh, you all think that after you leave the classroom, all the lights turn off and nothing happens until you enter it again the next day! But in reality, I'm here marking papers, teaching other students and running labs." 

It's easy (and probably convenient) to think that our actions have no consequences or ramifications once we can no longer observe their outcome. It's easy to think that once we leave a place it just ceases to be anything at all. But the reality is that things are always in flux - your actions can affects long after you have stopped thinking about it and the next generation will always be waiting in the wings. Such is the cyclical nature of the world we live in and it's probably worth remembering this once in a while.