Tyler Tsai, 17, Writer & Artist

At night, what keeps me up is my curiosity. I’m bugged it’s unlikely I’ll be able to visit exoplanets in my lifetime. I also think about crazy history coincidences, such as the fact Archduke Ferdinand’s license plate contained WWI’s end date. Is this a coincidence, or is there more to this? As Hamlet once said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

So what is my philosophy? Thinking about the miraculousness of our existence--how it has taken a mountain of coincidences for us to even exist and how one small action could have changed history. For example, what if Hitler hadn’t been rejected from art school? And, what if during WWI, the most decorated British soldier who held Hitler at gunpoint had not decided to let him live? And what if Hitler hadn’t been asked to spy on the Nazi party, which contaiged him with their ideas? If history is the story of how everything happened, what if there were a different story? Would I still be me? I ponder as I sit on a rice bed of wonder.

I also am curious about cultures, for I love people and thinking about how they act and think. Culture is one of man’s biggest influencers, for what we surround ourselves with shapes our decisions. It sets the standard for what we think is normal, and that is vital to reconsider as what we consider “normal” is what we most need to change. After all, science advances one funeral at a time.

Yes, I’m a nerd. When I’m not dreaming about space and girls, I’m dreaming about gamma rays and Earth’s mortality. There’s a Bhutanese folk saying that to be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily, for it is only by knowing we have but “an hour upon the stage” that we can make life more than a walking shadow. I do not want my life to be a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  

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