Radio Silence

This is Patrick Ahern, signing off.It’s been years of non-stop discourse, dialogue, and debate, analysis on meta-analysis. It’s been years of ‘intelligence,’ and this is my final show.I’m glad I did it, I think, glad I spent my high school years in this kind of fervent contemplation, learning to think circles around any aspect of the world. But I also spent it thinking circles around myself, and forgetting who I was. It was necessary, I suppose, to figure out who I was. But the time is past now.I know the people I respect and admire here, and they are not the loud ones, the prolific ones, not around the Harkness table or on Facebook. They’re not the clever ones, or at least not the ones who make their cleverness known. They are the quiet, genuine, straightforward ones. They have their pain, more than enough of it, and they face it, bringing no one down with them. They are like everyone else, but with a quality of strength and goodness that cannot be analyzed.So farewell, I say, to analysis. Let it take its rightful place, having left its indelible mark on my life, in the world of the classroom and the word document. Let it become a tool and not an obsession.This is my final paper, so let me sum up.At the end I have come to believe some very simple things: That the masses of mankind, the hardworking, the honest, andthe uncelebrated are, for lack of a better word, good or right. That they are, at least, better than me. That I owe them respect. That I must consider what they value and believe very seriously, and defer to it often. That my voice is incredibly far from the most essential or valid voice. That I should emulate those I admire, and many people deserve my admiration. That I am incapable of understanding many things. That anything which I do understand I will be incapable of articulating, thus rendering my understand- ing useless.That there is little point in talking about myself.So with all that said, I think it’s about time for me to peace. My education has been lovely, and now it’s time for me tolive my life. I’m signing off, turning off the microphone, putting the headset down, and leaving the swivel chair spinning behind me in the studio as I give the airwaves a rest from my incessant internal monologue.Having thought adolescence through to the bone, I’m going to take a stab at growing up.

Wish me luck