Be Courageous

I was studying in France at the Sorbonne University for a while, and the teacher gave us one main paper to write for the entire course. It was to compare the use of irony between Voltaire and a Romanian playwright named Eugene Ionesco. Well, I ended up writing a dialogue as if Voltaire and Ionesco were together in the same place and time, and they were having a debate between themselves about irony, and it was actually, if I do say so myself, incredibly funny. I spent hours and hours researching. I remember giving it to my roommate, he read it, and he said, this is the most hilarious thing I've ever read, but yet an incredible sense of both the spirit of Voltaire and Ionesco. So I was so deeply proud of this paper, and I turned it in. The day I got it back from the professor, there were big red writings on it, and it said, this paper can't even be graded because it's not done in the tradition of French academics, and is unacceptable, and you'll have to rewrite it. I was really distraught. I argued with the teacher. I said, you don't understand, isn't the exercise of this to gain a deeper understanding of Voltaire, Ionesco, the problems of society, how irony helps us smooth those things out. Didn't I demonstrate that. She said, no, it's not acceptable. So anyway, I was walking home after that discussion with my roommate, and he said, that's terrible, what are you going to do. I said, well, actually, what I'm going to do is I'm going to quit school. He said, oh, now come on, don't make any drastic life-changing decisions. I said, no, really, I am going to quit school, and, as a matter of fact, I'm going to do it right here and now, before I have second thoughts. I went back to my flat, packed my backpack, walked off to the nearest metro, said to my friend, let everybody know at school I'm okay and that I've quit, and I'll see you sometime. I got in the metro and took it to the train station, and looked up at the board, and took the first train to somewhere, and never looked back. Of course, my parents and other people weren't entirely happy about that decision, about becoming a college dropout. It was probably the best decision I ever made in my life, and it set me off on a spiritual search where I really gained a true education in the way and the meaning that I needed, and it changed my life forever. It was a decision that led to me being able to fully understand implications of the Holomovement and put it into practice. So those are the kinds of situations that life will confront us with, and sometimes it does require a life-changing decision, because if you've given it your best and you know you understand the object of the project and it's not accepted by society, then you have to go your own way and take a different path. It requires a little bit of seeming insanity, perhaps, in a moment, but it's about courage and loyalty to your own vision, and to what you in your heart knows is right, and you just have to stay the path."