To Parents

Dear Parents,

I’ve never had any children, I’ve never been responsible for taking care of or supporting another human being and I have no idea what it is like to feel that overwhelmingly love for a child. I am not a parent and I have no idea what it is like to be one. However, I’ve spent my entire life so far dependent on parents.

Looking back on my own childhood and my interactions with my parents, I think that I have suffered from not having the ability to express or explore my own individuality or personal self. I think there needs to be recognition that just because someone is a child, doesn't mean they are not also individual human beings with thoughts, beliefs and desires different that those you may have raised them to be. I think parents overestimate the influence they need to have in a child’s life. I think parents in the simplest form are to do nothing but give children the building blocks necessary for life and that it is up to the child to decide what they want to build with those blocks.

I dont think that everything I have learned or been taught is wrong, but I am examining them and I am starting to deem some things not in line with who I am or what I want. Looking back on how I was raised, I would like for their to be more independence and understanding that even if a child is a child, they are still a person and there will be a day when they will no longer see themselves as a child. I understand the need to prepare them for life, but I think more focus should be put on preparing them for themselves. The journey of finding, accepting and embracing oneself. Treat kids as individuals who can go beyond being a child, because no matter what, sooner or later there comes a time when we aren't your little babies anymore. I felt in my own childhood that I was constantly seen as someone who needed to be taught to follow certain rules that were deemed crucial for my life.  However, as I am growing up, my innate beliefs and the person I see myself becoming are making me question everything i have been taught.

To my parents,

As I am  preparing to go off into the world, I am struggling to figure out who I am separate from you. May be in the future I will look back and now that everything you taught me was right and true, or I'll  have kids and understand the struggle of guiding another human being. And maybe I'm  wrong about all of this, but as of right now, I think that a child needs to understand that they don't have to be extensions of who their parents are, nor do they need to be whoever their parents spent 18 years trying to make them into. Children are innocent and empty of life experience but they are also (and in my opinion more importantly) individuals who should learn about and embrace themselves above all else. I accept, understand and appreciate all that you have taught me, but I will not let it overpower my own thoughts or who I am. I am going off to college and for the first time in my life I feel very detached and astray, but liberated and divergent at the same time. I think that I am becoming myself, and while I have collected your teachings and may utilized some of them, it is only now that I realize i will can so at my own discretion. I refuse to live in your world anymore. My world is my own. I will always be your child, with your blood, your physical features and hold your guidance and teachings  in the back of my head. However, I from now on I will be my own self.

Speaking Frankl-y, I Just Dont Get It

I still think about the quote from the book that states that “the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way”. I think the definition of attitude is the way a person perceives and feels about a situation or circumstance and I truly don’t believe that this is something a person is able to chose. I think that a person’s attitude is innate and natural. It  cannot nor should it be manipulated. I think that the way a person chooses to act on their attitude is what should be regulated. A person should recognize how they feel and then decide from there how they will act based on it. The way they live their life (either according to or despite of their attitude) is what is influential and really important.

I also questions his logotherapy principal that the motivation for life is to find the meaning of it. Nathan brought up in class that maybe people don’t need a meaning to live their life by. I feel like this is a plausible argument in that maybe there is something in living ones life just because. I think that the idea of living each day just to live can be liberating and possibly, in a way, fulfilling. If you’re tied to one specific meaning, then maybe you're more open to life, what it has to offer and more readily to embrace it. 

I defiantly found meaning in many of the things stated in the book. Although, for some ideals and principles I question rather they are reasonable and applicable to everyone.

The Meaning of Life

It is up to each person to discover their own meaning. 

The quote I chose argues that each individual must look within themself to find meaning. In order to find the meaning of life, a person must look within to find meaning. Then take that meaning and apply it to their life and the way they live. 

I really don't think there is a meaning to life. I feel like we can sit here all day chasing our tails like dogs trying to figure it out but at the end of it all, I don't think there is A meaning to life. Like Camus said, humans have this want and desire to put meaning behind everything because in our eyes everything needs a purpose. We need motivation for completing something and to know our actions mean something.

 While I don't think there is a meaning to life, I think there is a purpose that every individual choses to live for. A subjective, personal and case by case different meaning.  I think the so called meaning of life is to find what life means to you individually. What means the most to you and is the thing you want to live for. Rather it is to be happy, find oneself, or love, the meaning of life varies. 

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Thankful For A Classmate

I am thankful for Cory Gatlin.

I first met Cory in the 7th grade at the academic center at Morgan Park. There we had many memories as little kids running around a high school. Us students were often loud, obnoxious and annoying but these were the funnest times I have had. Cory and I didn’t socialize together much at Morgan Park and after graduation I definitely thought I would never see this person again.  

When we graduated from Morgan Park, I went here to Whitney Young and Cory to Lindbloom. However, the first day of sophomore year, when I walked into my division room, there he was sitting at a desk. Not only had he transferred into Whitney Young but he was also now in my division. The last person I saw this person, we were walking across the graduation stage in white gowns. I found it crazy that someone from my past (someone I had completely forgot about) was now all of a sudden in my life again.

I had many fun memories at Morgan Park and have been fortunate enough to still have some of the people I made those memories with still with me today. Cory is a constant reminder that nothing is ever over. You may not ever see the last of someone. No matter what, I have realized, parts of my life and the people in my life are reccuring and can pop back up when I least expect it.

It is cool that years later I have friends like Cory, that I thought I may have once lost, still with me.

Alone

I think Siddartha and Chris McCandless both separated themselves from society and people in order to find themselves and their Self. I think that they felt that the only way to find this was through experience and misunderstood that experience must be done alone.

I first saw Into the Wild freshman year in Mr. Locks American Lit class. During that time we had been discussing transcendentalism and read Walden. Throughout the unit I became really interested in the idea of finding “peace in nature” and started to really reflect on some of the statements made about society and its influences on our lives. When we watched the movie,

I really resonated with Chris's mission and was all for what he was doing. I wondered if journeying out alone would really lead to self realization.

When Chris died, I was blindsided. I couldn’t believe that that was how the story ended, that that was the fate of Chris. I really wanted him to find everything that he was looking for and just couldn’t comprehend why it didn’t work out for him. Siddartha, like Chris, was hoping to find some deeper meaning and left behind many people in his doing so. I have rationalized it to myself that we need people in order to find Self or learn about anything. As both Siddartha and Chris argued for, it is through experience that we learn. But I think people and our interactions with them are major contributors to our experiences.

Interactions with people are our experiences. I think Chris and Siddartha misunderstood. Just because you don’t want to be taught by people, doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them.You don’t have to listen to their lessons and be influenced by them in order to have meaningful interactions that contribute to your journey to find Self.

Everyone is connected and separating themselves from everyone lead them both astray. In the end I think both characters realized that sharing happiness, peace enlightenment (etc) is important. Siddhartha's final moment with Govinda and Chris’s realization about happiness both verify the fact that in the end, they both weren’t alone. However, I do wonder if given the opportunity, would either one of them opt to go back in time  and complete their journey any differently?

We Still Haven't Figured This Out Yet!

     There isn't anything to figure out! That's why we haven't figured it out. This meaning, this purpose, this truth that everyone seems to be driving themselves crazy trying to figure out, it doesn't exist. 

     I think it's human nature to need purpose behind everything they do. We get fulfillment from knowing that what we are doing means something and nothing gets done if it not for anything. We want to know about everything. Why are we here? Who am I? We're all just wondering aimlessly looking for answers to questions that doesn't exist. Meaning where there isn't any. 

        I don't think there is one definite truth or meaning. I don't think there is ONE definite anything. I think truth and purpose are all up to the individual person and people get sidetracked looking for something that holds true for everyone. Throughout life we all go through our own personal journeys learning about and experiencing life as we go. But in the end, when it's all said and done, we still don't know anything more than what we started out with. 

        I think we all need to stop trying to figure things out; stop getting distracted. Instead, just live. We are wasting time trying to figure it all out, but maybe we aren't meant to. 

How Do I Know What I Know?

       You know what you know because of the learning and observing you have done since childhood, after you know to believe. Beliefs comes from questions, criticizing that leave you to interpret what you've been taught. In addition to what you've been taught in text books and by parents, everything learned from experience. Once you gain that experience you interpret it and analyze it. 

        You know what you know because it is what you have grown to believe. I think it all starts when you are young. You start off learning and observing from different experiences you have. We take after and learn from our parents, teachers and other influential figures during our childhood development. You learn from your text book that 2+2=4 and that Columbus discovered the Americas. From your parents what is right and wrong. 

         But it is after we have learned that we begin to criticize. It is this that leads us to believing and knowing certain things. We examine our life and the things we've been taught to see if they're accurate and if we agree with them. After you analyze you determine if you want to follow and believe in the things you have been taught. You know what you know because you have been taught it and after a process of examination, come to accepted it as truth and knowledge. 

        The things that are not proven or accepted are rejected. We no longer believe in them. Humans always want to make sense of things they do not know. So we set ourselves out on a quest in order to find the truth. 

        I think that trough learning, experiences and a lot of examining we decide what we think is true and decide to accept as what we know.