Eternally Happy Filter

I’m reflecting on this in class assignment later than I intended too. I wanted my thoughts to settle in before I ranted about how much I appreciated the assignment. I felt it was a very clever way of getting me to write openly about something I never like talking about and yet was the first thing that came to mind. I admired the “spin yourself” part that forced me to relive the event…who knew a car could be so interesting?
The pictures and clutter is such a contrast to the distraction free mode this blog offers. I have been enjoying the liberty of a blank yet stylistic page this mode offers but I have found it provides no shield against some of my more melancholy thoughts. The pictures and clutter on the assignment page, however,  put an eternally happy filter on an event I do not particularly enjoy. I felt like I was writing about just another random thing when really I was writing about something significant in my life. But the eternally happy filter could have also been a result of a good morning.

The brainstorm model the assignment follows reminded me of a book I used to write my college essay. Most of the book was, for me, useless with the exception of four pages. These four pages were titled “Brainstorm” and consisted of a list of categories or questions that asked you to fill in the blank. Favorite color? Creed? Old friends/Lost friends/Best friends. It was the most helpful thing to dig through my thoughts and pick out the most important ones that may have been conveniently forgotten or overlooked. The only thing these four pages lacked was the eternally happy filter – no pictures or visual aids. Just boring lines that really were not even adequate space.

I think I’m going to use this assignment to help write my med school essay.

In-class Writing Exercise

When we were told that we were going to do an in-class writing exercise on Friday, I had no idea what would hit me. I’m not saying it was a bad exercise, but I was not expecting something so creative either.

When given the piece of paper completely filled with drawings and writings left and right, I was reminded of the time when I did that for my notebooks because I was inspired by Amelia’s Notebooks by Marissa Moss as a kid. Amelia’s notebooks is also filled with pictures and writings, but about the daily life of a middle-schooler, Amelia. She encourages us to write and fill up our notebooks as she does, which is why the writing activity on Friday was so reminiscent of part of my childhood.

The activity started out with naming 10 cars from early on in my life. I got through the first 3 or 4 in a matter of seconds, but the rest was pretty hard to come up with, to be honest. I couldn’t even think of more after coming up with the 9th one when time ran out. On the very top of the list, not surprisingly, was my dad’s white Acura car. It was memorable because it was my dad’s first car and my first ride.

We continued on to finding the location of the car and its settings, people around, etc. I had a little trouble with this. Retrieving the memory of car and the location of it was even harder than I had thought. My dad’s car was the one that had been there for at least 1/3 of my life, so you would think I would have at least one vivid image in my head of where it possibly could be. Nope. After thinking for a while, my dad’s car appeared outside my current house for some reason, and I just decided to go with the flow of that image.

Writing about the car certainly seemed easier after that. I almost completely filled up the 2 pages were supposed to write. However, I felt like some thoughts were really random, and not really were the exact memories associated with the car. Overall though, the exercise was creative and great into getting me to think about the car and searching for details about it.

In Class Assignment– Changing one form of energy to another.

I found yesterday’s activity really interesting

This is what I produced:

I am five or six years old. I am seated in the trunk of our olive colored family station wagon in Bangladesh, which to us is the back seat. We’re sitting on a carpet that has been set on the trunk. There are no cushions and it’s quite uncomfortable. In the front, my Uncle is driving; my mom is next to him. In the back seat is my aunt, my grandma and my sister. We are the farthest back. We’re on our way to a relative’s house for lunch, which is not far away but seems distant because we’re stuck in traffic, as always. Behind the car, I’m aware of the dusty, crowded streets of Dhaka city. It’s hot and humid, but my cousin and I are imaging we are elsewhere—wishing we could go back to the bids that we left unattended on our balcony.

and I could have written more..

Outrage As Fuel

Cecilia Muñoz’s “Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing” reminds me in a lot of ways of Greta Christina’s famous blog post “Atheists and Anger.” They both talk about the importance of outrage for activists and about the prevalence of things that cause anger. Cecilia’s discovery of outrage as fuel occurred when she was told by a family friend that if the United States ever went to war in Latin America, her parents would belong in an internment camp à la Japanese Americans in World War II. The unfairness of that statement—the idea that immigrants aren’t, will never be, American enough—propelled Cecilia directly into the civil rights movement. In her essay, she talks about the pros and cons of that anger. She talks about how her outrage got her jobs in the immigrant rights movement and then in Washington, D.C. She talks about how she helped pass a bill in Congress that would help reunite Americans with their families. But she also talks about how outrage “hollow[s] out your insides.” How the defeats haunt you, no matter how many victories you have. At the very end of her essay, she writes about the things that temper her outrage and fill the hollow place mentioned above. It’s interesting to me that she moderates her essay in that way, as if she’s saying, “Getting angry can be a good thing, and often is, but not always.” Perhaps she’s saying, “Outrage is important, but don’t let it consume you.”

As an aside, the other post that I nearly chose was Errol Morris’s “There Is Such a Thing as Truth;” I have strong feelings about both those topics and they’re both incredibly well-written essays.

Unconditional Love & Support

Marianne Rogowski’s core belief in “Leave the Light On” is that home is a place where children will always receive unconditional love and support. For her family, leaving the kitchen light on is a symbolic beacon of unconditional love and support for children who have lost their way in the face of darkness. Rogowski describes the transition in her life that brought her to realize the true meaning and implication of her mother’s insistence to “leave the light on.” The story implies that as a child, Rogowski never truly needed to seek the unconditional love the light offered. She reveals that a pregnancy at age 20, on the other hand, demanded a need for unconditional love and support which she undoubtedly received. The comfort, assurance, lack of judgment, acceptance and of course, love Rogowski’s mother provided in Rogowski’s darkest time was a testament to the completely selfless bond between parent and child as well as to the promise that home is a safe haven. Rogowski testifies to leaving the light on to provide the same bond and promise to her two children. The multidimensional character of this piece in which Rogowski ties love, parenthood and growing up with timelessness was most striking. In ending the piece with keeping the tradition of leaving the light on for her children, Rogowski creates a sense of safety in the reader who comes to feel the light is not specific to any one family or event, but it is something to be continued and expanded.

This I Believe…

There were many essays on the site that I found captivating, and some I could relate to. The one that struck me the most and really got me thinking was “The Light of a Brighter Day” by Helen Keller. Faith and empathy are the pillars of this piece. She writes of faith being multi-faceted, saying that faith is believing in God, humanity, and immortality. Faith, to Keller, is something that comes with no fears.

“Even if my vital spark should be blown out, I believe that I should behave with courageous dignity in the presence of fate, and strive to be a worthy companion of the beautiful, the good, and the true.”

I thought this was a beautiful quote. I can’t imagine going through, and quite frankly, overcoming the circumstances Helen Keller did. This idea of behaving with “courageous dignity” even when things get tough is something I would like to strive towards. I think this is what surprised me about the piece: though Keller wrote this piece decades ago, her reverence and faith in humanity and the world around her is timeless. Today in 2012 her views are still a window through which I would like to view the world around me, and the faith within me.

After writing about the problems in the word during the time, such as famine and war, the final line left me with a chill: “But the thought comes to me that, like the little deaf, dumb, and blind child I once was, mankind is growing out of the darkness of ignorance and hate into the light of a brighter day.”

Keller uses the profound experiences she had throughout her life as a way to view what was happening around her. She recognizes what she struggled to grow through, and how she went from being trapped in her own mind to learning to communicate and be a part of the outside world. The idea of humans—trapped in their own web of issues and intolerance, as Helen was trapped in her mind—being able to one day open up and understand their surroundings was a profound way to connect her story and the things that shaped her life and beliefs. Even though the world around her was sometimes a complicated place, she still believed in humanity and had faith in tomorrow being a better day.

Believing in the Roots

High School Student, Amelia Baxter-Stoltzfus writes in her “Returning to What’s Natural” essay about her belief in semi-permanent hair dye. But it goes way beyond just that.

For Amelia, semi-permanent hair dye is way to escape from reality just for a little bit, but also being able to return back to the way things were. It is like a safety net for her. She can be whatever she wants to be for a little bit, while at the same time, she can also go back to what she actually is. She says this is contradicting, but she believes in hypocrisy, “just a little.”

The belief of using semi-permanent hair dye has helped shaped Amelia’s future, because she now believes in trying out new things, even though sometimes she wants to go back to how things used to be. This is where she explains her reason for being hypocritical. Even though she likes being safe, she explains that feeling safe isn’t about putting limits on the outside world. It’s about hanging onto what’s true on the inside, no matter the physical changes on the inside. This is where the belief of semi-permanent hair dye comes in as well. You can change on the outside all you want, but when the time comes for you to want to return to you natural hair color, it’ll be already there, waiting for you.

Amelia ties in her belief with what her new experience with moving out on her own. Though a strange and new experience, Amelia believes that only good things can come out of this. She believes she can get through this unfamiliar feeling, because of the “unshakable things in her life” that she can hold on to. It’s something for her to rely on. She knows that she can’t rely on her parents forever, and someday we all have to grow up and learn to live life, allowing her to believe in permanent change. However, just not for her hair.

Amelia’s piece was definitely an interesting read. I loved the way she tied her belief not only literally, but also figuratively. There was a meaning hidden underneath her physical loving of semi-permanent hair dye. I also loved the way she tied her belief in using words that were related to hair, to draw an analogy. On holding to life, Amelia says, “…Even if only at the base of a follicle, because I believe in the roots.”

This I Believe – I Believe in Being a Citizen of the World

The author (Dan) seems to have tried many things (how to live, eat, etc) and had the opportunity to live/visit other countries outside of the US. This allows them to reflect on their own values and compare them to the values they might have believed in if they had grown up in a different country. Emotionally, they seem to be able to think about their overall beliefs in a distant and calm manner.

From their essay, the author’s core belief seems to be that although they are American and thus have grown up with certain beliefs, the age they are in now is that of being a ‘citizen of the world’. Every person would think that their country is the best. But because of that, people should recognize the good things in other countries and thus become global citizens; to understand outside your own country and learn about other cultures and beliefs. If you can’t accept something, then it means that you just need to keep looking to understand–there is definitely something you have missed.

I enjoyed reading this essay because I understand where the author is coming from (being an American as well as Taiwanese–I’ve lived in both places for over 7 years and can’t decide where I love more). The best part of the essay, to me, was how the author pointed out that every one finds their country as the best. The author built up from the idea that if we imagined ourselves growing up in a different country (maybe a country we don’t understand or are afraid of/prejudiced against), our beliefs and values would be vastly different but it doesn’t change how we’d like our country a lot. Then, the author continued to build on these ideas to pull out his belief that we need to respect other cultures and continuously improve our own views.

I think that if more people thought this way, so many things could be better… respect is probably one of the most important things in our world. With respect, you’d want to listen to others and calmly try to understand how other people think. If you don’t understand something, don’t assume. Ask politely (which would automatically happen if you respected someone) and then listen. It’s a constant discipline that people should practice so that the world can become better.

Reflecting on Memories

Both of these essays involved memories of the authors’ childhood and how different they seem as adults. In Danticat’s essay she writes about a fire in the apartment next door and how it affected her life. The fear of what if it had been her brothers who started a fire or if it had spread to her apartment and not noticing. It was an eye opener to every one in the family of how they should be doing things. It seemed like it was a story about learning a lesson about terrible consequences, but it goes on to be more. She goes on to explain the dangerous incidents that went on in Westbury Court and the affect on her family until they decided to move away. At the time these incidents did not mean much and were a part of life, looking back though she saw how important they were. The fact that her father never took another picture after having his camera stolen is very significant. It shows how these events impact her family in such a way when back then it didn’t seem like much. She realizes how bad thing really were in that area. The only bright side to living there was the exposure she got form her politically active neighbors who wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the fire. It is not surprising that she doesn’t remember much about the fire. She said they did not know the children while and her mother probably never told her what happened since she was only 14.

In Kittredge’s essay he talks about his Uncle starting the Thanksgiving denture incident. He criticizes his reaction to it, but he was just being a kid and even as an adult it might might make him uncomfortable, although not be vocal about it. He reflects on his uncle’s behavior and using it to create this character who may not have even existed. He applies this almost philospphical acpect to him about thinking about and caring for the birds where there is really no evidence to support it. When he was younger he probably belived all the things his family told him about his uncle and for all he knows they may have been true. He probably just does not want to see him that way and it was probably too late to find out the truth from him. It reminded me of Wolff’s characterization of Hugh where he says what he would have missed, but does not know if he really would have wanted it.

 

A/N: sorry for posting last, didn’t realize it wasn’t posted.

This I Believe about tears…

I read many essays on “This I Believe”, and there weren’t any that I didn’t like.

Reading these essays, I realized one universal theme: a belief is sometimes so small, yet so strong that it can keep one going, help one let go, help one forget or even help one forgive. It’s interesting how people discover their beliefs in such various and different ways and how significant it is to the individual. Sometimes readers overlook this when they shouldn’t. No belief is cliché, for one is to oneself…

One essay that caught my attention in particular was, “I believe that tears are not gone to waste, but are held by the hands of God”, by Andrea.   Her essay depicted the sorrow of losing a parent and the meaning of tears which were beyond her control. In her essay she is fully devoted to God—the one who collects tears and makes life endurable. She sensibly and so skillfully informs us why she believes what she believes.

Perhaps I admire her and this essay because although I have never thought about tears this way; and now, I can only agree. She made me realize: “…tears are not lost in the abyss of our pain.” This makes me feel somewhat better about all the rivers I cried and all the rivers to come.