True Self

In the Stanger Mersault becomes what externalists would call true self when he understands the theory that life is meaningless. Everyone is born to die and the death is the only thing that is certain for everybody. When he truly understands this is when Mersault is finally able to be happy he lived his whole life in a struggle to be happy and now that he finally realizes that there is no point to life other than to die he can actually become content with his life!

Walt Whitman Poem Number 3

Walt Whitman Poem Number 3

"I have heard the talk...of the beginning and end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

 

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now;

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Now any more heaven or hell than there is now.

 

...Clear and sweet is my soul...and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

 

...Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,

That they turn from gazing after and down the road,

And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,

Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead?"

This poem is a string of counterparts. Its filled with paradoxes and opposites. It says one thing but means another. It shows uncertainty, for example it talks about hearing about the beginning and end but never talking of it. I feel like it can be seen as an attempt to show what he is thinking or how feels, but how he is too afraid to actually say what is on his mind.

A moment that changed my life...

The day I started my Vyanse medication for treating my attention deficit disorder was the start to my academic success that I had been longing for but not achieving. I would spend numerous hours studying and doing homework but I was not receiving the results I was hoping for. When I asked my teachers how to improve my grades, they told me over and over that I was simply not applying myself. It was extremely frustrating because I was putting so much effort and time into school. My medication gave me the confidence and focus I needed to see the results I wanted from my hard work. This has changed my life because with higher grades I was able to commit to the University of Hawaii for indoor and beach volleyball. :)

What Socratic Seminar topic stuck with you most?

         The topic that stuck with me the most from what we discussed in the Socratic Seminar was truth versus fantasy.
         Do we really want the truth? Do we even know what the actually truth is? People fear the truth so much that most of us live in a reality only partially real. We tell ourselves what we want to hear rather than what is actually going on. We live in a fantasy world and try to convince ourselves and end up actually believing its real.  I think this happens because one, we are such good liars, and two, We get so bored with our own lives we have to create something semi-interesting just to continue to stay engaged with our lives, I think people say they want truth, but lies is all they ever really want, We pretend like we want a life filled with truth, but really truth is what we fear most. No matter what anyone says nobody is capable living a completely truthful life. Everyone lives a life between real and fantasy.

Refection Week 1: Marcus Aurelius

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not a truth" - Marcus Aurelius

        I think that if you really think about this statement it is true. It would be easy to say that it is false and it is obvious that certain things are facts and if there are facts in the world then there must be truth, but how do you really know what your saying is true? We think things are facts because people with more publicity or power than ourselves tell us what is true. There is really no way to know is anything is a fact or an opinion. Yes, I think there are facts, which means there is truth, but I also believe that what we might think are facts are really just things made up in our imagination, there is no way to know if anything we see or perceive is really even real. I believe in the world that we think we live in and the world we think we know has facts and truths, but in reality we are such a small part of life and there is really no way to know if anything is real or just a fragment of our imagination.

Personal Statement: What do you want out of your life?

        When I look back at my life I want to smile, to know I made good choices and bad choices, and did things that made me laugh and made me cry. By the end I want to know with every accomplishment and every failure I had I can smile and know that i am happy with my life.
        I do not know how I will live my life, but I do know that I will learn. I will put on effort and with effort come success, but with success comes failure. I will learn how to be successful and how to learn from my failures.
        Of course if anyone is asked what they want with their life they will say happiness, love, money, and family. The better question is what are you willing to fight for? I am an athlete and a very competitive person. I am not content with just being good, I want to be the best. Realistically everybody cannot always be the best at what they do, but I personally believe that "the only failure in life is the failure to try". If you do not try you will never succeed and you will be forced to live your life saying what if I did that or I wounder if I can do that? I am playing volleyball in college, I may not be the best player, but I will always work as hard as I can work and do the best that I am capable of doing. I am willing to struggle or to fail as long as I am doing absolutely everything I can do to succeed.
        Life is about obstacles, it;s about the highs and lows, but it's how you bounce back from the lows that define the type of person you are. Your reactions are always more important than your reactions, I find; its there that you really find out who you are!