Dare

In class, we discussed "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," a poem that should be none too unfamiliar to those of us who took Mr. Croker's honors English III class last year. While some of us might not have been incredibly keen on revisiting a piece of work that we spent so much time analyzing during our junior year--a year that I'm sure most of us could agree we'd like to forget entirely, I was personally incredibly eager to touch back on it, as I feel like it'll be much more relevant to us all in the coming weeks and months than it was during that grueling 11th grade year.  

In this poem, T.S. Elliot presents the reader with a character who doesn't seem to be quite sure of his place in life, in society, and in the universe. On top of some of the more insignificant issues that J. Alfred Prufrock seems to worry about, such as the way in which he chooses to present himself to the public, Prufrock is constantly confronted with the ever-changing qualities of time. "There will be time, there will be time," he says; 

"Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea." 

Here, Prufrock seems confident in the fact that he has all of the time in the world; later, however, we see that his feelings are much more complex than he initially makes them out to be, as he begins to worry about his growing age and question how he's been spending his time, wondering whether or not it's worth it to do so much as eat a peach. It's obvious that Prufrock is a man who has spent life skirting around the edges, trying his hardest to be unnoticed and unobserved; a mere extra in the film of his own life. He doesn't want to grab the bull by the horns and risk getting impaled; in other words, he fears making the wrong choices. And yet, as he grows older and his time wears thin, he wonders whether he might be wasting it.

As we tread our way through our final year of high school, the looming prospect of applying to and being accepted into college hanging over our heads, I think that we can all find it easy to relate to Prufrock in some way or another, whether we share his doubts, his fears, his insecurities, or his indecision. In the coming days, weeks, months and years, there a number of decisions that we'll need to make, and we can't be exactly sure how any of them will affect our future. What we can know, however, is that time will not wait up for any us. It shouldn't be wasted skirting around the edges of life, carefully choosing each decision we make with the weight of the world on our shoulders.We should dare to take that once in a lifetime trip, or talk to that person we've spent so much time admiring from afar, or even to eat that peach, because as messy as it might be, it could turn out to be the best peach you've ever tasted. 

After all, why worry so much about disturbing the universe? It's not like the universe has ever provided us the same courtesy.