On Breaking Negative Cycles
For once in recent memory, this isn’t an entry about my habits, though the title perhaps doesn’t lend too well to breaking that impression. It’s about one thing, on three different scales. Three very different scales. I have had some experience with participating and being involved with so-called traditions, and that includes things that don’t feel as though they deserve that title, so let’s just call them ‘sustained actions. These sustained actions are rarely, if ever, fun things to carry out. In my experience, in fact, I contributed to an already large volume of reluctant and begrudged groans and moans. Then, once finally released from the responsibility, those subjected will do anything they can to make sure the next generation has to pay the same price. Sometimes, literally.
My first example takes place in boarding school, where hierarchy is the law. It was the responsibility of the boys in my year to collect bread from the dining hall to be brought back for use in our house kitchens. For two years we had to do this. That was the understanding. As soon as our third year started, our penance was done, and we were afforded the right of looking down at the younger years having to carry out the same monotonous ritual. We felt like kings. One day, though, my housemaster broached the possibility of doing away with the bread-fetching responsibilities for the youngers, in service of what was admittedly a much better system. I’m ashamed to say my immediate reaction was anger, indignation at the mere notion that the younger years would not have to go through what we did. It was an injustice; where was this goodwill when it was our turn not two years ago?! You get the idea – and its unreasonableness.
This brings me to my second point: university. It’s something everyone goes through with or without an idea of what use it could serve them, and it remains one of the most important factors in deciding one’s financial security. More people do it simply because it’s expected, and because ready and comparable alternatives are severely lacking in promotion, comparatively. So when I made the decision to leave university, it wasn’t one I took lightly, for the reasons I just said. The academic system has been moulded around this notion that university is the next step one must take. I hope that, one day, the factors that led me to apply for and start university – even though I didn’t particularly want to – are done away with; they’ve long outlived their use.
A larger point can be made about the exorbitant fees some of these universities charge with little justification, leaving their alumni in worse situations than they found them; motions to do away with these fees are spurious and flimsy. Unfortunately for my readers, I am most definitely not the person to be making that point, I am nowhere near qualified; I just wanted to cap off this entry by demonstrating how such simple issues that permeate our everyday lives, when scaled up or down, are equally as infuriating. I’m not going to try and compare having to pay student loans to having to collect bread, but a larger discussion around this state of mind could wield nothing but change, which is absolutely necessary.