Lesson #20

    As someone who has a camera roll containing over 10,000 photos (that’s not an exaggeration), I expected myself to be a proponent for pictures. I have thousands of memories taken in many different places and at many different events; however, all of my photos have two things in common: All of the pictures are staged, and all of them are edited. Everytime a picture is taken, it is not with the intention of remembering some specific, important moment-- it is taken with the mindset that this event is something that one would be proud to look back on. So out of those 10,000 pictures I have stored on my phone, how many of them are actually authentic?

    When I went to Europe this summer my parents insisted on taking pictures of “everything”-- and by everything, I mean specific things. I have pictures of the subways, every restaurant we visited, and the sights we saw; and in each one everybody in my family has a plastered smile on their face-- because this is how they wanted to remember the trip. I cannot even bring myself to look through those pictures because most of them are so incredibly fake. The trip was amazing (of course), but my dad is an extremely stressed out traveler-- and in between the smiles we were all very tense. My parents forgot to take a single picture of us all yelling at each other in the hotel rooms as we discussed where we wanted to go; and yet every time something looked “presentable” my parents suddenly remembered their cameras. So how do I look through these photos, and pretend they show the whole truth?  Am I just expected to boil down my entire trip into a few manufactured smiles?

    Now what about the more serious times-- the difficult moments that actually shape us as people. I mean thank God I have pictures of my 8th birthday party, but I don’t think that day has really affected me as a person. If pictures are expected to represent me, then where in these pictures have I developed as a person-- beyond physically? I can look back at photos as much as I want, but they do nothing to show me who I was, and how I have changed. Every single one holds the same facial expression with a different background; so let me ask… where are the pictures that show what I have been through? Who was holding the camera after my head was split open and I had to rush to the hospital? Where are the photographs of me when I had to have brain scans to make sure I wasn’t epileptic, or had a brain tumor? Why are there no pictures of those moments? The answer is because those are times that nobody wants to show the world. We take pictures because one day people will see them, and we all want to pretend that we live perfect, frown free lives. As Susan Sontag would say, “the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses.” By taking these pictures we try to show what we want our lives to be-- not what they are. Nobody takes pictures of the day to day boring moments (the ones that actually show our lives), because that is considered “too boring” to photograph.

    When we look at the pictures everyone posts on instagram, not a single one captures who we are. When I want to post something, my friends and I go have photo shoots--where we put on cute outfits, and make sure our hair and makeup looks good; then we find the perfect location, with the perfect lighting, and take pictures that make us look as “presentable” as possible. Then after these pictures are taken, we edit them to make sure that the entire photo looks absolutely perfect-- as it must be amazing so that others can see. The effect of this is that people become impersonable through anything digital. We look at the profiles of people who appear flawless, which makes us feel like we need to change our own lives-- hence how the cycle has continued. Ultimately this is because we have been fed a lie: a picture cannot really hold a thousand (genuine) words.

Lesson #20: Don’t rely on pictures to remember your past.

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.

Lesson #17

    I would like to take a moment to consider what the “true nature of life” really is. From the day we are born, we are all trapped in an existence where we are forced to make choices that will define our future. With each year we grow our decisions become more important, adding onto the stress we face. Though this poses the question of what it really means to go through life.

    We start off as babies, with a “vital light” that comes from an innocence and lack of experience with the world. Children are the beautiful creatures that captivate the attention of adults, who usually lack most memory of their early childhood. This is the stage where everything appears to be purely fascinating; the adolescent craves every ounce of knowledge they can absorb. Yet this innocence comes with a certain level of dismissal to their ideas; adults consider themselves wiser than their children, but in reality their mentality is just more clouded. If you think about it, the most well-rounded people are those who are unbiased-- our youth. They have not had the experiences that are able to persuade their views in a certain direction. At this stage they are “nothing but life;” there is world of opportunity ahead of them, and they are the ones who can see it the most clearly.

    As life goes on, these children become adults. Their new found responsibility comes with mountains of stress, and most come to the conclusion that life is “a hard fate.” During this stage their vital light becomes tainted, and the simple joys experienced by children become harder to appreciate. The joys in life begin to come from more superficial things, such as a bonus at work or finding a good sale. Although these things may seem meaningful, they begin to overshadow the natural simplicities that adolescents adore. It seems as if those who choose to ignore the struggles of life are perceived as naive, yet in reality they simply captivate more “vital light” than others. Although adults have physically aged, their mental maturation is what makes them adults. The most significant change they acquire is their view of humanity.

    The final stage is being considered elderly. These are the people who have had the most life experiences, seen the world, know what it is like to be a child and an adult, and are far enough in their lives to see through it all. These people now contain a completely different kind of light. Their vitality may be running low, and their brains are full to capacity, yet many of them often return to the simple joys of life-- though not completely. The encounters they have prevent them from returning to a stage of innocence, though they begin to understand why everything seems so wonderful in the eyes of a child. There is a certain connection that grows between the beginning and the end, one that bonds the hearts of the aged with the hearts of the young; they reach an understanding of what it means to come full circle. This is when the “true nature of life” begins to appear-- even after all these years, the elderly take the time to notice what has been mostly forgotten. The world, although different, returns to its state of beauty. They enjoy the wonders of life that are only temporary-- as they wait for the next stage of life, where they will return to their innocence.

Lesson #17: Beauty and wonder should not be lost with age.

Lesson #16

I myself think I am Las Vegas sometimes. Not because I believe myself to be overly extravagant, but because I often feel like the “world outside.” Right now we all live in this extremely tense atmosphere that is full of people doing everything they can to stand out to colleges. I see my friends running themselves to exhaustion trying to become the most appealing to schools that are terribly hard to get into. Every single friend I have is currently trying to get into the U of M medical school, and frankly I have no such desire. Science has always been my worst subject, and I would never dream of pursuing that as a career. They all stress about their grades in ways that I can never imagine. For that, I always feel like I am doing something wrong. I wake up everyday to go to school with the future doctors of the world, and that makes it incredibly hard to feel like I belong.

All of my life I have been dreaming of being a lawyer, and defending people that have been wronged-- which in itself seems like an incredible career, but yet for some reason so out of the ordinary. As all of my friends have complex conversations regarding DNA, I cannot even begin to grasp these concepts. Yet if you put me behind a podium with something to argue about, I could have the time of my life.

I was helping a friend write a debate the other day, and it finally occurred to me how different my brain works, compared to the brains of my friends. As she sat there trying to work out every ounce of logic, I was thinking about the million different kinds of emotional appeal. I realized that as much as I want to be someone who thinks about nothing but sensibility, I will always be the person who can convince someone's heart before I can convince their brain.

Now I feel like I know Vegas on a personal level. It can never blend in, and it cannot assimilate with the dessert around it; nor can I blend in with the science majors of this world. Vegas is always taken like a joke, the party place of the west-- but nobody understands that it is simply different from everything surrounding it. I may not stress about my grades like everyone else does, but that is because I have to be passionate about something to apply myself to it.

As much as we make fun of Vegas for being one giant party, it is also full of people who seem to be able to make a business out of anything. We underestimate their ability, just like I too underestimate my own. I am surrounded by people who have 4.0 GPAs and who will become the future geniuses of this world, but just because I aspire for something different doesn't mean that I cannot change the world one day too.

Lesson #16: A path is like a fingerprint, no two can be the same.

Lesson #15

    If you think about the concept of the American dream, it sounds extremely far-fetched. It is the idea that this country allows someone to have the freedoms it requires to flourish and create a life for themselves. Although this idealist mindset appears unblemished, the reality is that the United States withholds it’s freedoms in other ways. This nation may be physically free, yet we are also the 3rd most depressed country in the world, and have leading levels in alcohol and drug abuse. So I would like to pose this question; do we glorify the United States?   

    I tend to believe that we have so many mental health issues because people focus on their external appearance and economic status more than we focus on our personal connections, and overall well-being. The lack of time that we spend simply enjoying the beauty of life is something that is pitied by those who spend minimal time obsessing over external values. The United States has a foundation that is based on the idea that “the human body is ugly.” Naturally many people would not admit to this-- yet we spend much of our lives going to the gym so we look in shape, looking at ourselves in the mirror, comparing ourselves to others, judging those around us, judging ourselves, buying beauty products, researching the ways we can change our imperfections, aspiring to be others, and wishing that we could make ourselves perfect. This country may look wonderful on the exterior, but those inside know no such freedom. There is a reason that we look so alluring to outsiders; and that is because all the outsiders see are the billionaires, and the fancy award shows, and the supermodels, and the lavish lifestyle that we all crave. What they miss is all of the people who already live in the US, who are striving to be someone that we can be proud enough to show the rest of the world. In our nation fame and riches are the only way to be well-recognized.

    When I went to Germany this summer, I came back feeling like I had seen the world in a whole new perspective. I have never met people who were as kind or as patient as them. I did not stay in a tourist city, so I am well aware that they were not simply nice to my family because they had to be. I felt more at home there for two weeks, then I ever have here. The people there say hello to each other on the streets, and pay for the meals of those at the table next to them; they walk places rather than speeding in cars; they sit in the park and talk to their neighbors rather than rushing to their phones. They stress the importance of those around them, and their community had the familiar comfort of what a home should feel like. Here I don’t even know the names of my neighbors, and our community has a very “cold comfort.” I find it reassuring that there are others there, but very few of them are involved in my life. We treat our neighbors and our society as purely others who are also trying to survive, rather than being genuinely interested in knowing who they are.

    To outsiders this is what the American Dream is. They simply see economically stable people living in a free country, and they automatically assume that it is a well-rounded place. This is how america is glorified, or might I say simplified. Freedom and wealth do not make up a country-- it is core values that shape it. We may be economically thriving, but the people within are suffering from the mental confinement that has been placed in us. We are all striving for recognition from our society. The American Dream is a very isolating experience. We all hope that one day the people in our lives may “raise a monument” for us, but the only monument most of us receive is the one we are buried underneath.

Lesson #15: It takes a full perspective to fully understand.

Lesson #14

    I find it utterly embarrassing that in society today we would choose to add another car to our collection or buy another pair of diamond earrings, rather than cherish the millions of wonders that surround us on a daily basis. It is as if society can never be satisfied with the provisions that many of us were born with. My fear is that society is already beyond repair, and we will relinquish this world to our future with nothing more than the craving to fill our souls with material possessions. It is sad to say that most of us still want the new iphone, or a shiny new car— when there are people in this world that don’t even have the luxury of a steady income. We tend to forget the importance of mental well-being, and those suffering from poverty. This greedy nature we express is something that will haunt those who fail to realize that a shallow life will never lead to true joy. We think that we can just throw away our problems and replace them with mass-produced items.

    It is not just materials that we discard. Humans seem to have a limited threshold for anything of sentiment. We live in a world where much more than just milk is labeled with an expiration date. Even friendships are often set with a time-limit. I think most of us have those friends that we spend time with purely when we see them fit to our necessity. These would be the school friends, and the workplace acquaintances of the world. We choose to not form these relations further, because we do not rely on emotional connections to fulfill ourselves; we instead are captivated by what we see on store shelves. Just as Eighner said in “On Dumpster Diving,” “Even if I had a home with extensive storage space I could not save everything that might be valuable in some contingency.” The problem is that we seem to mistake the word “valuable” as something purely materialistic. No price tag can be placed on most of the wonders of the world, yet we seem to limit ourselves to be enslaved by objects that can be easily replaced. This is the reason why our country is so wasteful; people have refused themselves to think of the smiles we see on the faces of others as something to treasure. We would not be so careless if we started filling ourselves with mental reassurance, rather than the items that can be held in our grasp. I think it is crucial to understand that a flat screen tv cannot fix a broken heart, and a faster car cannot drive us away from our problems. We instead need to focus on building ourselves as people, not building the mountain of overproduced plastic that we will leave to our families once we are gone. I regret to inform us all that we seem to cherish possessions over physical relationships. The bond of hearts that we make with the real people in our lives should be what fills our homes, not the most expensive china, or the newest surround sound speakers. If we are really limited to the things of value we should keep, then we need to stop buying what will make us temporarily satisfied, and then throwing it away in next week's load of trash. We should all take a minute to remind ourselves that having the most in style clothes will not make us more loved, and maybe then we will stop pining to look presentable on the exterior. I urge us all to stop recognizing ourselves based on how much we own, and begin to see each other based on the quality of our characters.

Lesson #14: Life is about the emotional connections.

Lesson #13

The truth about sexism is that it does exist. It may be diminishing with time, but it still finds ways to creep into our lives. Now I don't want to think of this as starting an argument, but as many problems as men may understand— this is not one of them. Even I cannot begin to understand what it must be like to have society waive my right to vote because they do not believe that I am equipped for such a task.

When this country was born, men were given the birthright to vote— this was something that women had to fight for. Women were rarely given the opportunity to work, until WWII when there were not enough men home to work. It is important to acknowledge that these rights are not something that were handed to a women, they were not something that she could call her own. This is why I believe that it is hard for men to understand. They were never given the oppressive message that they were undeserving to have such liberties. Men have never once had to give a reason as to why they would prefer to find a job rather than clean up after the children. I believe that instead of becoming defensive about such a topic, it is important to understand that the message behind it is not malevolent, but rather explanatory.

When reading "Letters" between John and Abigail Adams, it is sad to say that Abigail was forced to argue with her own husband that she should have rights. Women were not given the right to vote, as they preached for equality, and protested the hypocrisy. She requested that men "give up the harsh title of master" so that the minds of capable women could finally be heard. It was those who were born with their rights handed to them on a silver platter that were reluctant to extend the same liberties to others. Abigail was required to prove to her husband that she was deserving, because a women's wit and intelligence is something that society questions.

I personally can't think of many times where men had to prove to women that they were deserving of the rights we were deprived of. I think this is one of the instances where you really cannot understand unless you were to walk a mile in the shoes of a women.; because in that case, I would like to go back in time and ask a man why he would deserve the right to vote over his wife. I would like to ask the employers that pay women less why a males work is more valued than a females?

There are some choices that really baffle me, but the one that feels most present at this moment is why no man stood up for his wife. Why did no brother stand up for his sister? Why did no father stand up for his daughter? Was there some type of disease that made women look comparingly less worthy? I cannot seem to fathom why the role of a women was cast the way it was. I look around me today and I see a world of women who are doing amazing things, and women who are changing this planet for the better; and this just makes me ask: how much better would this world be if society had realized the importance of equality?

Lesson #13: The rights of one should be the rights of all.

Lesson #12

The date today is February 10th, 2019; I marked today with this date because it is different from any other day that will ever happen again. I think that is the part that we forget about labels, because we often tend to focus on only the negative ones— yet there are so many that can be positive. Our tendency to feel judged by people’s comments, doesn’t allow us to see the beauty that comes from these marks.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know what it feels like to be negatively judged. It is incredibly insulting for people to assume that I am in regular classes, or that I may not care about my grades. I once had a math teacher tell me that I should not be in honors math, before he had even seen me take a test. But as much as I wish that this judgement could be minimized, I don’t think I would choose to take away the labels that surround us. One of the comments Deborah Tannen makes in “There is No Unmarked Woman” is “there is no women’s hairstyle that can be called standard” (554). Take the word “standard”, how does being standard sound more desirable than being different? I believe that women are blessed with our inability to be like everyone else. Yet Tannen chooses to make standard sound like a wonderful thing. I label everybody around me, but those labels are not inherently negative. Take my best friend as an example, I would label her as incredibly smart, charismatic, and compassionate; this is what makes her who she is— yet because I am describing her, I am marking her. These are the marks that Tannen was forgetting. We are all characters, and our life is us writing our storybook; and in my story I am perfectly happy to be labeled, even if I don’t always appreciate the labels I receive. I personally don’t believe that being marked is a bad thing. My math teacher may not have been right to label me as incapable of taking an honors class, but he did make me want to work harder to prove him wrong. The people who assumed I don’t care about school may have underestimated me, but that didn’t suddenly make me deem myself to dim-witted. The beauty with labels is that they are not permanent nor are they limiting. I am marked differently by different people. I am marked as a daughter, a girlfriend, a best friend— which are markings I am blessed to carry. We can choose to look at these labels as scars or beauty marks. No two people carry the same markings, and for that I conclude by saying that I would rather carry marks for everything, rather than losing all of the meaning that they carry. So next time you wish you could rid yourself of marks, I urge you to think about who you would be without a single marking.

Lesson #12: Who would we be without the markings we have?

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.