I once told a friend that most of the wisdom I've attained on life as I see it has come not through experience, but through observation: the consequences of the mistakes my friends have made, and the rewards they've reaped from the opposite.
He told me that by doing so, I wasn't living life the way I ought to.

I argued by asking, "Then in what way 'ought' I to live? The trouble of using experience to navigate my way through living is that the effect of my decision-making comes first, then the lesson; not always will I have the ability to fix the first of the two."

He then responded, "Then, what right do you have to wish to exist as distinctly independent, if the life you choose to live is not your own?"

The good things in life are not things.

We, a sea of uniform purple gowns, passed through the main halls as students for the last time.
If my peers eventually come to understand and accept the impermanence of all things, perhaps we truly might be able to make society a better place, just like they told us.

Oh; we're all on uneven beaches of white, combing the grounds for forgotten valuables with metal detectors at hand,

These motivational posters these days: usually the words you'll read beneath an irrelevant but still colorfully beautiful photograph are the postermaker's definition of strength: "Don't give up. Never give up. Keep fast, keep strong, keep vigilant, keep persistent."

It wasn't until this year that I'd encountered people who, with their lives and stories of sad ordeals, their trials and their ne'er-fore revealed personalities, have unknowingly taught me that sometimes, it's true strength that's needed to let things gently go.