Lesson #19

    I wish that I could live a life free of uncertainty; one that could be predicted the same way as your run of the mill, cliche movie-- but that’s not how life works. Life likes to kick us when we are down; it likes to take us by the hand and whip us around until we are so unsure of where we are, that we can barely see straight. So how is it that anyone is expected to live a “doubt free” life? How are we as people who experience pain, hurt, and disappointment supposed to live blind to that fact that there is so much injustice in this world? The truth is, even the most faithful of people must have doubt about life. The only way to be free of a feeling of insecurity is to not be living. In all honesty, doubt is what makes life so exciting-- doubt is what keeps us striving for better. I know that sounds contradictory, but who wants to watch the same cliche movie again and again: not me. Doubt is what makes life, life; when we feel the most insecure, we are at our maximum capacity to grow.

    I personally tend to live in my “safe” box when I can; I love having security, because it was something I was not given when I needed it most. Yet living inside my own little bubble does nothing for me. Giving myself an easy way out only makes my goals fade and my impatience fester. Like most people, when I feel unsure I want to run-- and sometimes I do, but other times I stay along for the ride. When I run, I go to my safe place: my best friend's house. We sit on the couch and watch tv with a pint of ice cream, or take our dogs on long walks through the park. However, as much as I love these moments, I know that they are a way for me to keep myself safe-- my security blanket. When I choose to stay along for the ride and live with insecurity, I find how much potential I have; doubt gave me my first boyfriend, my spot as captain of the soccer team, some of my really close friends, a leadership trip to Switzerland, and the overall amazing feeling that new possibilities come with.

    As William Lyon Phelps said, “I think we ought to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt.” Viewing doubt as negative is a common misconception; in reality doubt could not serve a greater purpose. If we were to be certain about everything, we would never have to take risks, never step outside our comfort zones, never take a leap to see what we are capable of. Life would be boring, overrated, and easy. Nothing about the world we know is simple, so why should we let ourselves believe it should be? When we feel those knots in our stomach forming, we are doing something right; this feeling is nothing but the world telling us that we are on the right path-- our next adventure. We all need to have a little faith that doubt is serving its purpose. Nobody ever hears about people who grow without facing challenges, nobody succeeds at everything on their first try. Our doubt makes us question what is really important, which ultimately leads us to finding who we are.

Lesson #19: Having faith in everything makes one blind, yet having doubt makes one human.

Lesson #18

    The English language is inherently one of the hardest languages in the world, which is due to the fact that English is basically on odd offspring of other languages. It’s not just our language that is from other countries: it is the culture and the ideologies. Overall we are a place with an immense amount of diversity-- which you would this would make the US easy to adapt to, but in reality it makes it extremely difficult.

    Our diversity can be an amazing thing, seeing as we are able to understand the situations of many other places, and experience other cultures-- yet the drawback is that we are an outsider to other countries. It is amazing that the US can relate to so many different backgrounds, yet we have no established background of our own. This is because we have tried to make the US into a place where all countries come together, rather than focusing our energy on making the US a country of its own. As Charles Krauthammer says, the US is “a world far more complicated and fraught will division.” This is due to the fact that the US has no established past, which makes everything much harder to function. Just think about it, we are trying to combine the ideas of the whole world into one country… now does that even sound remotely plausible? To make the United States a place with no established language or culture is to make a place that cannot stand without the foundation of other countries.

    The United states is weak and lost in the state that it is in; but how can we expect it to be any other way? Has nobody ever thought of the reason why we are always so politically divided? Why every ideology comes with new ideas, and a further divide? The US government goes back and forth between democratic and republican presidents because we can’t makes up our minds, and yet we expect this country to have a sustainable future. Many countries look to the US to be strong and united, yet there is not much we have that unites us all. We all live in the same country, but cannot relate to the experience of others. If we look far enough into our past we all come from somewhere else; I come from Germany, Italy, and Poland, my best friend comes from Lebanon and Poland, my cousins come from Italy and Ireland, and my neighbor comes from China. So what really connects us to each other? Is it the experience that we have had in the United States? Is it our ancestors that came from the same place long ago? There really is no right answer, but we can’t pretend like we never have think about it.

    I think that in order for the United States to really earn the title of “United,” we need to have something that actually unifies us: whether that be an established language, or a united government. We can be a culturally diverse place and easily thrive, we just need to feel like we connect with each other. If we were all to feel banded together, then we could begin to work together to create the United States that we thrive to be. All it starts with is a single commonality.

Lesson #18: To be United, we have to feel like we can relate to each other.