The Green Tea Speech

Ladies & Gentlemen of the Class of 2011:

Have Green Tea.

If I could offer you only one piece of advice for the future, Green Tea would be it.

Green Tea is low in caffeine and has antioxidants which reduce the risk of a wide variety of diseases, from cancer to schizophrenia to hip-hop music & hypochondria.

My other advice has no such benefits, and may seem self-indulgent, grotesque and completely incomprehensible.

Slow Down.

You rush too much for your own good. What seems like a journey to nowhere now will seem like a great idea later on. Or at least it won’t seem like a bad idea. At some point of time, you will realize that the journey was the destination. Or at least it’s more comforting to think that way.

Don’t be so serious.

No one is judging you. Heck, 99% of the time people don’t even have time to think about what you are doing, much less to evaluate you. There’s only one person who thinks you are important and that you matter, and that’s yourself. Or your kids, till they turn about 5 years old. After that, the roles reverse.  

Don’t Undo.

If there’s one function I could banish from the realm of technology, it would be Ctrl Z. Ctrl Z is a sneaky little thing, designed to lull us into a false sense of security into thinking that things in life can be reversed all the time. Don’t be fooled. Make mistakes, knowing they won’t get reversed. Creation has given you the license to fail.

Read Spam.

I love reading spam mails. If you ever needed proof that not everything in life makes sense, spam is it.

De-Systemize

Be afraid of technology. Not from the fear that it will replace you or challenge you, but from the fear that it will make you forget how to live. Watch The Terminator, knowing that it’s a work of fantasy which will never happen. Watch Wall-E, dreading that we could be heading there soon.

Don’t outsource your life to technology.

Accept that Relationships fluctuate.

People aren’t always around. They all have their tracks to run on. Don’t take it personally. It’s better to understand and be misunderstood, than to misunderstand and be understood.

Nope, that didn't make sense to me either. But it sounded right.

That's how relationships also are.

Love your Parents.

It’s selfish. And it’s important. We all have our 2 AM friends. Sometimes, however, the 2 AM friend is the problem. Parents work 24/7. Thank God.

Experience. And Share It.

Be appalled. Be happy. Be sad. Be enthralled. Don’t jump to the endpoint. Don’t conclude in advance. When your friend tells you about the new movie he saw, listen to him. Don’t Google the review. He’s sharing an experience. He’s doing it because he wants to tell YOU about it.

Facts are not important. Conversations are. Otherwise, everyone knows everything anyway.

Free yourself.

From the pressure of optimizing. Of perfecting your choices. You are not an algorithm. You won’t always get the best fit. Sometimes, it’s fine to just have a good fit. Most times, in fact. Optimization isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Don’t Pre-Live.

Don’t live life, before you have lived it. Wait for it to pan out, to flow. Your time will come. Welcome it.

Love.

No one’s important enough to be hated. Everyone is insignificant enough to be loved.

Follow my advice. Or don’t follow it. Advice is more necessary for the giver than the taker, because he wants to be sure of what it is that he thinks he really knows.

Which isn’t much anyway and could be wrong.

But trust me on the Green Tea.