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.