Lesson #11

Sometimes it can be hard to tell where my life ends, and my imagination begins. Its like the dreams my brain creates can feel just as real as reality itself. It's like the comparison of diamonds to rhinestones; they both look very similar, but in the end one is priceless, and the other is barely worth a price. Its not to say that I feel like life is barely worth a price, but dreams are diamonds. The reality in our heads is flawless-- packed with fame, fortune, and love. Then life comes back into play... I wake up every morning from a world where I was the queen, to go to school with 2000 other people who have just as much say in the world as I do. I always wondered why no amount of sleep ever seems to be enough, and I have come to the conclusion that I just prefer to live in my dreams. Being asleep means that I only have to view diamonds, and I can forget for a minute about the existence of rhinestones.

"There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gifts of disillusion."

Life to me feels like I was handed the gift of disillusion. Life is nothing like what I pictured it would be. With life comes pain, loss, heart break, fear, exhaustion, and failure. As a kid I entered this world like I had the ability to rule it, but life has taught me that I can't.  When I was little, I wanted to be a professional soccer player. But the world soon taught me that even when you work as hard as you can, it is not always enough. Practicing for hours a day isn't enough; cutting out junk food and only eating healthy isn't enough; running until I can barely walk isn't enough; kicking a soccer ball until the calluses on my feet begin to bleed isn't enough. For the work I put in, I do not receive awards-- instead I receive sprained ankles and countless bruises, followed by the doctors orders to take months off of the thing that I love the most. So the dreams I had turn to dust, and I find out the diamonds I thought I had are just rhinestones. I don't know that diamonds are really worth hoping for, because in the end maybe some of us just aren't meant to have diamonds. Maybe for some people rhinestones are more fitting. Though it is the hope to find diamonds that wakes me from my dream state every morning. So all I really have to hope is that I just haven't found my diamond yet.


Lesson #11: When life gives you a diamond, make sure it is real first.

Lesson #10

There was something about The Great Gatsby that made me feel inherently nauseous from reading it. The apparent infidelity and the idea of love was completely shaken, leaving the ending with the message that the love the characters expressed for each other in this book was normal, healthy and actually real love. I personally don't think I could disagree more.

"I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove."

The fact of the matter is that this quote shows the ignorance and immaturity of ideals from the characters in this book. First of all the idea that you can walk into someone else's life without changing anything is completely inaccurate. This was disproved multiple times throughout the novel. You can essentially only enter someone's life if you make an impact on it. If you meet someone, then the change you make may only be slight, but I promise you there is one. This is especially true when people seem to think that they can have a really casual relationship with little commitment, (which was really the only type of relationship seen in The Great Gatsby) and nobody will get hurt in the end. I want to emphasize the fact that you can not enter anybody's life emotionally and expect there to be no strings attached. We as human beings want to form connections, and connections come with all of the good and the bad. The only reason Nick said that he "imagined" this is because it cannot be real. Yet so many people not only in this book, but in our lives try to make this fabricated concept a reality. It's like people are so completely absorbed in what they want that they can't for even a second imagine hurting the other person. We are all people who have pasts, and those pasts come with pain, loss, love, fears, desires, and HUMAN EMOTIONS. If you haven't figured it out yet, these emotions are physically inescapable. Coming into relationships with the idea that you can be indifferent to who the other person is, is absurd. Everybody's relationship in this book was messy, and that is where I would like to address the problem; if you feel anything for another person, whether it be friendship or hate, or any kind of love, you cannot expect there to be no strings attached. If you make even the slightest impact on that person then you have entered into their lives. People are complicated, and I am sure that will never change. We feel things like love and hate, and with that comes a certain responsibility that I feel The Great Gatsby chose to ignore. Fitzgerald tried to scrape by with the deepest concept of love being obsession. The simple fact of the matter is that is not love, and I hope dearly that people know that. If Gatsby had really loved Daisy he would have wanted what was best for her, but all Gatsby wanted was what was best for himself. The reason I cannot be in support of this book is because I think they chose to glorify things like infidelity and the representation of lust as love. It is sad to say that things like this aren't viewed as wrong or incorrect. I hope this idea of human relationships is one that started and ended with this book. Because people are not surface level.

Lesson #10: Entering someone's life always makes an impact.

Lesson #9

I think that living in Troy a lot of people (including myself) tend to forget how lucky we are. Living in a place that has low crime rates, minimal poverty, and a good school system is something we tend to over look on a day to day basis. I think a lot of us at Troy high focus on the negatives instead of the positives; we think about how much homework we get, or how difficult our classes are, rather than how prepared we will be for college, or how well known our school is for its education.

I think in life as much as we don't want to admit it, we all tend to think of ourselves as the victims, or the disadvantaged. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had" (Fitzgerald 5). I think this quote should make us look at our view of not only ourselves, but the rest of the world. The way I think of it is on a worldly scale. In Troy High we tend to complain about how hard our education is; yet I have friends at Athens that complain that their teachers don't even bother teaching them the material. What they don't realize is that their are kids in Detroit who barely have classrooms for schools and have minimal education; the kids in Detroit don't realized that there are people in impoverished countries who don't even have the option to go to school. I think we only tend to compare the things we see as negatives or disadvantages, instead of all the things we are blessed to have. 

I like to think that the best possible example would be the government. As we all know, people in the US love to complain about our government. We talk only about the corruption or what we feel the injustices are. Yet we fail to see how blessed we all are for living in a country that is free and gives us the ability to do things such as criticize the government. In China the government runs the country, they do not have the freedoms that we have to speak our minds. I personally could never imagine living without the freedoms that I have and I think that is something that many Americans overlook. In other countries people are killed for opposing the government and are given no freedoms at all. I think this is a problem with criticism. We not only criticize others for their disadvantages, but we overlook our own advantages. We look at everybody like they come from the same situation as us, because we don't know any situation other than our own. I think that criticism comes naturally to humans because it is hard to be open minded about situations we know nothing about. But I think that if we look harder at what we are judging people for, we might judge others a little less.

Lesson #9: Judgments are based on limited thinking.

Lesson #8

Has anyone else ever wondered why the definition of love varies in different dictionaries. Although they are similar in each, they vary from, "an intense feeling of deep affection" (Oxford Dictionaries), to "strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties" (Merriam-Webster). Although the differences are slight, an entire mountain of confusion can arise from the differences. The second definition seems to completely call out the idea of "love at first sight" as false. Yet the first definition leaves that up for interpretation. In Song of Solomon the idea of love was questioned. The idea of love being about consistently caring about someone was rarely reciprocated between lovers. "It is about love. What else but love? can't I love what I criticize?" (pg. 282). Isn't the idea of love to respect rather than criticize? Can someone ever feel so intensely about another to disregard any flaws that could lead to criticism? This makes me question how people view love in general. Can there really be a dictionary definition of love if the concept itself varies from person to person? Ruth and Macon were never in love in general, their marriage was full of spite and resentment. Milkman was never in love with Hagar, yet near the end of the book it seemed as if he was in love with the world around him. Yet in certain definitions of love it does not seem to include the idea of loving inanimate objects. Even between Pilate, Reba and Hagar, the idea of love is questioned. Hagar was handed everything she wanted on a silver platter, and Pilate and Reba delivered anything she desired without as much as a complaint. Although the idea of giving somebody everything they need seems like love, it also seems like the longing for affection. Through out the novel it seemed as if Pilate and Reba were searching for validation from Hagar; they seemed constantly obsessed with the idea of making Hagar happy, as if Hagar's happiness was directly proportional to their own. This need seemed like a validation that the two needed from Hagar, rather than love. In the end of the story there was never any conclusions drawn about love; we never once witnessed a happily ever after where anybody was in love for the rest of their lives. I think a lot of the reason love was viewed the way it was is because love is very hard to describe, and almost impossible to write on paper. Although myself feeling to naïve to sit here and dissect the true meaning of love, I can conclude that the dictionary should not include a definition of it. Emotions are one of those things that seem to delicate to define. A feeling is not something that can be passed on from person to person. Defining the idea of love limits the possibilities that such a delicate concept holds. Love is different for everyone, and I think it is only fair if we let everybody have their own definitions.
Lesson #8: Not everything can be defined. 

Lesson #7

Over the course of my sixteen years of life, I have began to realize that we never know what is going on in anyone else's head. Almost everybody lives their life self-absorbed in one way or another; its not that human beings are ultimately selfish, I genuinely believe that a lot of self-absorption comes from a fear of being rejected by society, not necessarily that we think we are the center of the universe. While reading Song of Solomon I noticed a common theme of everybody constantly worrying about themselves. They all seemed to push their own agendas with the idea that the world should adapt to that individuals way of thinking. But then I started to think about how our vanity really affects us. "Too much tail. All the jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit that weighs you down." It was my opinion that the "jewelry" that the bird was wearing, was alluding to the theme of vanity throughout the book. Although that didn't seem to necessarily be the theme, that was the idea that stuck with me. I think that we all wear jewelry in our lives, because I don't think anybody really knows how to live without it. I think our jewelry are the things that we constantly think about within ourselves, whether that is our insecurities, our desires, or our resentment. For me I am always obsessed with having things organized and stable, and I would consider that part of the jewelry I wear. Guitar said that we have to take off our jewelry in order to fly, but I don't know that we necessarily can. I think that some of what "weighs us down" is what makes us who we are. Without that I don't know how we could all be individuals. I also don't think that humans should be able to "fly". Although I recognize that was used as a metaphor for freedom, there is a reason that birds can fly and we cannot. Humans are different than birds; we are made with more complicated thoughts and emotion, and I think that is part of why people can't fly; very honestly I would choose to have the life that I have, full of consuming emotions and constant thoughts, than to be considered free and loose all that. This relates back to David Foster Wallace's idea that people should live life with a selfless attitude. I am truly not convinced that there is any such thing as selfless. Even when we are doing things for other people, we are doing those things because they make us feel good about ourselves. I think the only real way to embrace the human experience is to accept that we are not made to fly, because if we begin to fly, we are no longer human.

Lesson #7: There is a reason that humans are made the way they are.

Lesson #6

Reading Song of Solomon this week has really made me think about the details that we tend to miss in our everyday lives, specifically the color imagery made me think about the way we associate colors with emotions, scenery, and everyday objects. “And the very young children couldn’t make up their minds whether to watch the minions circled in blue on the roof or the bits of red flashing around on the ground,” (Morrison 5). The way Morrison was able to associate colors to make vivid imagery is a lot like the way we try to make our own life more vivid. What I found amazing is that the world around us is full of colors but we so often forget to remember them. So I tried writing a poem with the same imagery.

She felt the red pumping faster in her heart, as each breathe became shorter.

She felt the orange flames raging around her, each second bringing more warmth.

Her eyes saw the yellow spots rolling around in her head, keeping her questioning reality.

With each breath, the smell of the green world around her turned to the inhalation of smoke.

Every blue tear that left her eyes turned colorless as she watched the gray overtake her world.

The indigo walls around her dissipated, as the ash washed her hope away.

Searching for an escape, she looked up to see a now violet sky, calling her home.

But the gray was far too consuming for her to win.

As she opened her eyes one final time, the only visual she had was the rainbow above her.

Lesson #6: The world around us is full of imagery that we so often overlook.

Lesson #5

I have recently realized how odd the idea of a protagonist and antagonist are. We not only apply protagonist and antagonist into stories, but we make people the good and bad guys in our own lives. Think about a situation where you were mad at a friend; in your mind your friend is probably the antagonist-- while you play the protagonist. Yet if you were to get the same story from your friend the roles could be switched. Or what about getting that same story from a bystander? One of the questions from the Maus seminar was, " How do you feel about Vladeck's role as a flawed protagonist?" I disagree with this question as a whole, because how can we ever truly identify a protagonist? I think overall Vladeck was a good person who was just trying to survive, but that doesn't mean that he always was seen as the good guy. What about when he let the blonde women traveling between Auschwitz and Birkenau risk her life for him to stay connected with Anja? He let her put herself in danger for his own personal gain. Would her family view him as a protagonist? Or what about when Vladeck would only give snow to the dying people on the train, if they gave him sugar? Although Vladeck was trying to survive, he could have been the cost for lives lost. These people had nothing, yet Vladeck would not share his snow unless he had something to gain. The entire idea of protagonist and antagonist are faulty and dependent on the view of others. The idea that our perspective is thorough and unbiased enough to give someone the title of "good guy" or "bad guy," is faulty. Although it may serve as temporary clarity, it can never really capture all of the essence and qualities of an individual. So I suggest that we take away the labels of protagonist and antagonist completely, and accept the fact that all of us fall somewhere in the middle of good and bad. Humans are not perfect and we never will be, so even giving ourselves these labels in everyday situations can never really be accurate.
Lesson #5: Labels can never fully represent a person.

Lesson #4

I think a big problem with our world today is that we fake too many emotions, too many actions, and too much of our lives in general. I think that a lot of times in our society it can be hard to tell if people are being genuine or if they are fabricating emotions to best fit the mold that society sees. it’s hard to deal with the constant paranoia of the way we should act versus the way we feel. Even using Maus as an example,“I could avoid the truth no longer-- the doctors words clattered inside me… I felt confused, I felt angry, I felt numb!… I didn’t exactly feel like crying, but I figured I should!…” (Spiegelman 101). The words “ I figured I should” have incredible depth. Think about how many things we do on a daily basis that we feel fit into the mold of society. Think about how many smiles you fake, or laughs you manufacture so that you feel that you fit in. it’s sad to say that in our world today what we feel isn’t good enough to express all the time. We all have times where we put on a mask and pretend to cry, or smile, or have fun, or even just being present in general. We fake these things yet we know that this isn’t stuff that we truly feel, yet we are okay with it because it’s socially acceptable. I think we as people should start expressing what we really feel even if it’s not what we think we should. We should express ourselves the way we feel we should be expressed, not the way society feels we should be expressed. It’s okay not to cry, it is okay not to smile, but it is never okay to pretend with something as delicate as emotions.

Lesson #4: Emotions are an important perspective of who we really are.

Lesson #3

On a daily basis we have millions of thoughts that run through our brains-- some important, and some not. We live in a world full of busy schedules and high stress situations, and so often life can feel impossible to handle. Although I believe that a lot of what David Foster Wallace said in his speech is extreme, I agree with with his idea that we are all lost in our own heads. "As I am sure you know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your head."  There is something about this constant monologue that makes me question the human brain. Why do we always have to have ideas in our heads? It’s not like all of our thoughts are self-involved, but all of our thoughts have meaning to us. It’s something about the individual life experience that makes our thoughts, and reactions to those thoughts different. There are millions of factors that define our life experience, from our personality, our likes and dislikes, our goals, our appearance, where we live, and ultimately the attitude we have towards everyday life. Some of these factors are controlled by the way we listen to the thoughts in our heads. Although at the end of the day, every decision we make originates from that monologue. As much as we may sometimes despise our thoughts, we also have an equal amount of reasons to thank those thoughts. It is our brains that make the good decisions along with the bad. I personally have many days where I just wish my brain had an off button, but at the end of the day I have to realize that if my brain were to turn off, then I could not function at all. So how can we despise the very thing that makes us who we are? Maybe deciphering our own brains is the real way to be happy. I don't mean analyzing every individual thought until we drive ourselves crazy; I mean listening to our brain the same way we listen to everything else in our lives. Our brains tell us everything about ourselves, and I believe that if we listen to that, we will learn what will make us happy in our everyday lives. Once we learn to live the life that we love, the love can spread. So before we blame our brain for the pain in our lives, maybe we should really listen to what it has to say.

Lesson #3: The way we listen to our thoughts affects how we live our life.

Lesson #2

I believe that the problem with us as a population is that we try to live our lives too independently. Thoreau said in his piece, " You must live your life within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs." I personally could not disagree with this statement more. I think part of the problem with humans is that we don't work with each other well. We all have our own altercations with the world, but we don't use each other like we should be. The reason that more than one person exists on this earth is because we are supposed to live in harmony with each other. Think about a single raindrop, by itself it is almost useless and has no real purpose. It is when raindrops form together that they create amazing things. Each raindrop blends together to form puddles, creeks, rivers and lakes. This is how we should be as a population, if we put aside our differences we all have similar intentions. We as humans are not taking advantage of the fact that there are seven billion of us on this earth. Imagine the amazing things we could create if we were to put seven billion brains together; the possibilities are endless. In the poem "The History Teacher" Billy Collins says, "Trying to protect his students' innocence," the reason that he felt that he had to protect his students is because the world is seen as a cruel place. Yet it is not the world that is cruel at all, it is us people who live with the attitude that what we want is the most important thing. We can all have our own opinions and our own lives while working together. We all feel like we are fighting against the odds, But what would happen if we all supported each other? When we fall we should have seven billion people waiting to help us back up. It is not the strength in numbers, it is the strength in unity. A world that works together would be an amazing place to live. If we were all able to be supportive and open-minded with each other, then war would end. At some point we have to understand that if we don't want to have to "protect kids from the truth," then we need to change the way our world works. Our world should be the type of place where we can look at our children and tell them the whole truth, and once we can do that we will know that we are headed in the right direction.
Lesson #2: We should be the change we want to see in the world.

Lesson #1

This week we read a piece in English about the importance of war memorials, and I have to say that I don't think I will ever be able to look at them the same again. As someone who finds wars interesting I thought that the piece was going to be something like most other writing on wars, but there was so much more. It talked about the world being unrecognizable to soldiers, and the word home being used to separate soldiers from their homes instead of bringing them closer. " I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world" (Booth 1). When I read this quote for the first time it really stood out as very important. I visited Europe this summer and seeing all of the diversity in other countries made me feel the same way. I know I was not a soldier coming back from war, but when I came back to the United States after a month it felt like a foreign world. There is something about adjusting to somewhere that makes going back home much harder. Seeing something so different from the way we live our lives was incredible, but it was also a very large adjustment-- just as I am sure it was for the soldiers. When we did our research on a war memorial I used The women of WWII war memorial, which was one that I saw this summer in England. I have to honestly say that the memorial did not stand out to me the first time I saw it, but after doing research about it I can conclude that there was much more than what meets the eye. I really think that there is a lot of meaning to a memorial not having a large description, because interpreting the memorial for myself gave it a much deeper meaning. Now looking back I wish I had known the history behind the memorial when I had seen it.

Life Lesson #1: There is always more than meets the eye.