Let’s say you’ve got the opportunity to write an article, an opinion editorial, as it were, that will be read, you hope (for some reason), by a large portion of the Northwestern student body and maybe some faculty too. But what do you write? Who are they and what is there to say to them all? Or what should you say to them all? Does your breath smell? Is it enough to write what you think? Don’t you have an obligation to challenge them to think? After all, you’re not writing in a vacuum; you have the ear of the masses and you can whisper into it whatever sweet nothings or revolutionary propaganda you choose!

Now ask me, is that a conversation you had with yourself? Answer: subtract the breath thing and yes. So that’s my opinion: discover your own! If there’s one thing I could say directly to you all (and look, I can) it would be this: be human-and think.

That’s the revolution I want to start. At this point, I may start to sound, if I haven’t already, like a freshman seminar professor with 80’s glasses and male-pattern baldness, or like a preacher, or maybe like a friend talking in the dining hall the day after tripping on shrooms. So, let me give a little background.

From the time I entered sixth grade up until I graduated high school, the television in my room was on every day from the moment I got home at 3:30 p.m. until the moment I woke up at 7 am, and you can only imagine what happened in college.

I remember taking those state-issued, standardized tests and there was always a poll before the actual test in which they’d ask you how much TV you watched. I’d immediately go to the last of the five bubble-in options, which I always mistakenly read as “4-5 hours a day or more” instead of “4-5 hours a week or more.” I think someone must have been trying skewing those stats somehow, though I don’t know why. In any case, the real point is that I always thought it was funny how absurdly inaccurate that phrase “or more” was to my watching habits. TV was my life and has been my spiritual home until very recently.

And I am certain that my most essential perspectives on life have been shaped by the images of it I saw through the screen. I’m sure the following is not unfamiliar to you, either as an experience in or a statement about our generation: my expectations for love were formed entirely by the countless at-first-sight and easy reconciliation scenes I’ve seen. I expect black people to be dangerous, brown people to be dangerous, and mosquitoes to carry disease, which is dangerous.

But perhaps my most essential expectation fits into this TV and movie paradigm: one day that one, big opportunity to change myself and my world entirely, radically, forever, will present itself, and all I’ll have to do is look into the distance, have that “aha” moment, and then write the greatest American novel in a 30-second montage, as the camera circles my desk and me, smiling, ripping page after page from the typewriter. Or, I’ll sacrifice myself on the steps of the Lincoln monument for some political cause that brings eternal peace to the world. The camera swoops up, over my bloody body splayed out like Jesus on the cross.

I realized only a few months ago that I was sitting around, waiting for such a scenario to present itself, and watching TV in the interim, because, what else would be worth my time?

Despite this, I still believe I can start a revolution. And I believe it’s realistic. And I believe my motivations are pure. Now I have to say a little more. Last week began the sixth school year since I entered college in the fall of ’05. I’ve been in and out of school on this long, bachelor’s journey and a little bit around the world, and I’ve realized in a deeper way than these words will convey that the world is a lot more complicated than I ever did, can, and will be able to imagine. For instance, the word complicate comes from the Latin meaning “fold together.” But the word fold means “to bend (something) over on itself.” So, what does it mean to bend something on itself, together? And what does it mean that the word complicate doesn’t mean anything remotely resembling that?

Now, maybe this seems like silly word games or useless philosophical contemplation. And I’d probably have to write an epic treatise in a 30-second montage to respond to such an accusation, but suffice to say that that is how I believe we start to unfold our world-through thought, which begins and ends with language. And why should we unfold our world? Because it’s human. And

there is something truly miraculous about being human, as opposed to being alive (which is pretty cool too). I’ve called myself a religious fanatic, because I still can’t believe I believe in G-d. I’ve been a Nietzschean fanatic preaching to whoever would listen that G-d is dead, G-d forbid. And I’ve also been an LA kid with hair down to my shoulders, aspiring to make movies. But what remains through it all is the fundamental belief that to go through this life and not do what I’m meant to is a waste. And I, we, if nothing else, must be meant to be human. To think, to choose, to create ourselves and our world(s).

So, that’s my opinion: think. Yesterday I overheard one of those at-first-sight girls on Sheridan say, “I’m thinking about what to do with my stupid life.” And I know you didn’t mean it, ma’am, but nevertheless, let me say that life, your life, is a once-in-an-expanding-universe-opportunity! Here’s what I wish I could call a humble suggestion: take 10 minutes alone today to think about what it means to be human.

Do it because you can. Do it for the sake of those first homo sapiens who spent thousands of years sticking pieces of seaweed into holes in rocks by the shore, building civilization one trail and error after another. Do it for the people who stood on their shoulders and walked on the moon.

And I hope we can start to unfold our world, together.

Jamie Weissmann is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].