I will never be considered a standard debater, but I do believe that I love debate more than many around me who call it meaningful. Today's debate is often portrayed as something special: debaters are set apart from ordinary people, and debate identity is valued more highly than the actual knowledge gained from the activity. We see this linguistic trap everywhere: debate rankings for high schools, seven-minute speeches that glorify debate as a subculture and its uniqueness as a badge of pride.
But when I hear these speeches, and look at these people and their field of public opinion, what I sense is nothingness: pride in being nothing, and nothingness itself as pride. Debate becomes vague, while commercial operations and social narratives multiply.
I remember my first debate teacher. In his class, I never felt the pressure of competition or the commercialization of debate, nor the obsession with uniqueness. I believed debate was about reflection—the ability to think and never take things for granted. I thought everyone saw it that way.
Only later, in high school, did I realize how rare that perspective was. I was an exception in a field where everyone claimed to be exceptional. My first teacher was exceptional, too—but in a quieter way. He shielded us from the world’s noise and brought us back to the basics: curiosity, honesty, and the courage to think. From him, I learned that debate is not about constructing pride out of emptiness, but about searching for truth and beauty that might fill the emptiness of modern life.