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Put your hand up if you have thought about death.
Dying.
The end of the world.
I’ve thought about all of these things many, many times. It’s called an
‘existential crisis’; a moment in which you stop, and question whether
life has any meaning or purpose, seeing as we’re all going to die in the
end. This usually ends in me crying alone at three am while stress-
eating, but that’s a different story.
Because this speech is supposed to be uplifting, I’m going to talk
to you all about living for today. The famous Latin proverb, ‘carpe
diem’, translates roughly to “seize the day, for tomorrow you will
die.” Aside from the death part, it’s pretty motivational. ‘Live for
today, for tomorrow never comes.’ Another famous proverb. With
imminent death looming upon us, it’s important to focus on
the now.
So, straight up, I’ve already lied to you. I said this was going to be
an ‘uplifting’ and ‘motivational’ speech. Yeah… no. So sit down,
fasten your seatbelts, grab some popcorn, ladies and gentlemen,
because today I’m going to talk you through all the ways the world
might end.
Right, so I was going to go through the whole sun-exploding-
earth-ending-fire-death scenario, but by now everyone’s heard that.
It just doesn’t… scare me enough. Has anyone here heard of the ‘ice’
theory? To save you all from the boring science formulas and
equations and logic and stuff, it pretty much works like this: water
doesn’t freeze without ‘impurities’ or imperfections. This means
water can get a lot colder that zero degrees without freezing,
if
the
water is completely purified and perfect. How does this relate to
the universe? We have reason to believe that our universe works
similarly. Many think that our entire universe is like purified water;
completely free of flaws. But as soon as a tiny flaw, imperfection,
impurity is introduced…
Done. Frozen. End. Goodbye. Next chapter.
So if science stuff isn’t the end of us, it’ll almost certainly be us.
Humanity. Global warming. Greenhouse gases. Holes in the ozone.
Tragedy after tragedy. Bad political leaders… Donald, we’re onto you,
mate. Not to be all ‘yay-flowers-trees’-ish, but we’re not living
7
Carpe Diem
Anna Timm
Orator Of The Year
Winner