To be sitting in this auditorium today, all of you have accomplished much. You have slogged through years of exams, excelled at your CCA and overloaded on commitments to arrive at where you are.

Being an alumnus, I remember that 4 years ago, I was sitting exactly where you are sitting right now, feeling a mixture of stress, self-confidence, and, for lack of a better word, disillusionment.

Disillusionment that though I have achieved success, I have not achieved meaning. That though I have read about life, I have not experienced life. That in the picture of success that our award-winning schoolmates and scholarship-bagging seniors have painted for us, there are missing strokes.

And it was not until after my A levels and graduation that I realize what that disillusionment really is. I’d like to illustrate that with a story.

2 fish swim past a turtle in the great pacific. The turtle said, “Ain’t the sky beautiful today?” The 2 fish wondered, “Sky?” Turtle said, “Yes, sky. The thing above the water”. And the 2 fish wondered, “Water? What is water?”

Now, this story might sound simple, but it encapsulates the source of my discontentment with life. I had failed, like the 2 fish, to see the water around me. I have failed to see that everything in my immediate experience have supported the illusion that there is a default standard of success, and that my sole job is to strive towards it. I have been led to believe, my entire life, that I am the realest, most vivid and important person in my own existence, and the purpose of my existence is to maximize my own sense of fulfillment and self-satisfaction.

That is the water around me. And I have failed to see it. Because sometimes, the ultimate barrier that is going to trip you in your pilgrimage for meaning in life is not that prestigious scholarship 10, 000 miles away, but the most immediate, painful and obvious reality right before our very eyes. It is our failure to exercise our inherent freedom, the freedom to choose, the freedom to decide.

This could easily be yet another black-and-white photo from the history chapters on Nazi Germany, a picture of conformity and the power of the system over the individual, except for one glaring detail –this person, August Landmesser, both a member of the Nazi party and the husband of a Jewish woman. In an environment where everyone bows down to fear, he chose to stand up against it. In an ocean where the water is thick and fierce, he saw past the water and glimpsed the sky. While everybody else unconsciously defaulted to fear, he made a conscious, awakened choice to exercise his freedom to stand his ground, and live life by his own terms.

This may seem like an extreme example to illustrate our collective fear of freedom, but it really isn’t. Just think through your life till now. How much of your life has been spent working towards an automatic goal that society has deemed important, and how much has been spent living out life on your own terms?

We all have 2 lives –the life we live, and the life we could have lived. In between the 2, stands our fear of freedom.

Yes, as paradoxical as it may sound, we fundamentally fear freedom. Because freedom is not free; in fact, freedom comes with one of the heaviest chains we can imagine –responsibility and vulnerability. We all have the freedom to speak our minds during assemblies, but we don’t do that. Why? Because then, we are responsible for our speech. Every piece of armor drops off, and we are laid bare, for the whole world to see. We can only trust that the world responds in kind.

This is the Molai forest in India. Not too impressive, until you realize, that 30 years ago, it probably looked like this. Which isn’t too impressive either, until you realize, that one man –this man –single-handedly planted this forest, seed by seed, over 30 years. What was once a tree-less sandbar where reptiles died in hordes, is now a thriving forest supporting Bengal tigers, rhinos, deer, birds, rabbits and over thousands of trees. It spans 550 hectares, or 20 times the size of the entire HC campus. This man has dedicated the better half of his life to one project, one aim, all because he was deeply moved by the reptiles struggling in the sands of death. Do you realize how much vulnerability it takes for him to see past the water and make that decision, while the rest of the world simply defaults to the automatic zone of comfortable apathy and walk on by?

And so this is my message –see past the water and exercise your freedom to choose. Allow yourself to be moved by the sufferings of the world, and dedicate your life to a cause larger than yourself. Realize that though you are not the center of the universe, you can make a dent in the universe.

Most of all, no matter how deep your water is, never, ever be cynical about our own humanity. We always have choice. We always have freedom. Sometimes, all we have to do is to block out the external noise, and listen carefully to the quiet whispers of our hearts. If we’re lucky, we might even hear the bubbling of the water.

I’d like to end off with a beautiful quote from Steven Covey, “There is a space between stimulus and response, and within this space, lies all potential for human growth and actualization.”