For P3 Concentrate on PR, W, C
I am in the middle
of a strange part of my life. Thinking
about what my values are sort of hurts my brain, not because I don’t have any,
but because my mind gets cloudy and confused when I try to. Quite simply, living on my own has been an
incredible experience, albeit not one without some complications; I have been
put into numerous scenarios in the past six months that I have had to tackle on
my own, without the help of a parent or mentor.
These lessons have given me a lot to think about, but the absurd speed
of college life (as epitomized by the slogan: sleep, study, socialize: pick
two) has prevented me from really evaluating them. As I write this, I am basically going to
analyze the feelings from my past and attempt to assemble the virtues derived
from such feelings, thus (hopefully) coming out on the other side of this paper
as a much more put together person, a being who is confident and certain of
what his values are.
To begin, let’s go
back to my early years when I first developed a notion of a value. Some of my oldest memories are from
kindergarten and first grade.
Specifically, I remember being absolutely dead-set on doing well in
school. I question if this determination
was a product of my parents’ influence on me, but I really believe that I just got
a personal satisfaction from succeeding in my studies. Even though I didn’t receive any letter
grades, I treated every homework assignment as if it was a do or die final
exam. Academic success was (and is) the first
value I can remember, and it has been instrumental in shaping me into the
person I am today, for the better and the worse (I’ll elaborate on this later).
My insistence on
doing well in school quickly earned me the reputation of being a teacher’s pet. Friends were hard to find in elementary
school, but bullies were never in short supply.
I remember one boy who only referred to me as “Calculator” from first
through fourth grade—I truly don’t think he ever just called me “Sam.” In hindsight, such instances of name-calling
seem trivial and dumb to me, but at the time they were crushing; naturally, I
spent an incredible amount of time feeling unwanted and disliked. My self-confidence was nonexistent, leading
me down a path of awkwardness that only further worsened my classmates’
perception of me. Adding to the brutal
cycle was that in the search to find an escape to the harsh world of my
elementary school, I turned to video games, which reinforced my “nerd”
identity. Books also gave me some
respite, but my infatuation with Star Wars novels and the expanded universe
surrounding the mythos didn’t make me any cooler.
Middle school
marked a semi-fresh start for me, so when a new wave of kids entered my class
in fifth grade, I quickly set out to make positive relationships. Remarkably, I actually had some success and
developed a small group of tightly knit friends. They accepted me for the nerdy guy I was, and
I was unimaginably happy—for a time. The
thing is, there is this awful thing called puberty that seems to turn everyone
into a paranoid, self-serving social climber.
To an extent, I certainly fell prey to my pubescent brain, but my
“friends” soon stopped supporting me, and I quickly fell back into the lonely
depression that haunted me in middle school.
All of my griping
about how socially miserable my childhood and preteen years were leads me to my
second (and arguably most important) value: companionship. Being so lonely for such long periods of time
took a permanent toll on me. When I
switched schools in eighth grade, I finally found a group of stable friends who
I’m still very close to today. My
appreciation for them is immense, and I owe them for improving my confidence
and building the foundation for my present day identity.
Eighth grade was a
transition year for me: I spent some time feeling unsure of myself, but I
gradually got over my past issues. By
the time high school rolled around, I was feeling much better about pretty much
everything in the world. Without many
personal problems I was finally able to focus on my values and morals not
immediately applicable to me. I was
exposed to these thoughts in my English classes throughout high school, easily
my favorite subject year in, year out. This
was where I first developed the notions of virtue and vice. My sophomore teacher preached to us that
performing ethical goods for others gave us a unique sense of internal
satisfaction incomparable to any type of satisfaction derived from performing a
self-serving action. Quite simply, by
serving others we indirectly serve ourselves because we gain a sense of “good”
in our hearts when we do so. I totally
agree with this assessment, which makes me wonder why I continue to be such a
selfish person today.
“Ye Shall Know the
Truth and the Truth Will Set You Free.”
What is the truth that the tower motto is urging us to seek out? I believe that it’s the truth of knowing
oneself and that once someone comes to understand his or herself, that they
will be set free from any self-confusion.
It’s funny because after feeling so sure of myself in high school,
college has completely thrown a curveball at me and I now find myself almost as
lost as I was in middle school.
Again, I’m
currently at a loss as to why this is. I
think it has something to do with the many hidden things in the self-doubt that
comes with not knowing myself, specifically some of the blind ideologies that I
cling to. In Melanie Joy’s Carnism
essay, she notes that, “…we feel for other sentient beings. Most of us, even those who are not “animal
lovers” per se, don’t want to cause anyone—human or animal—to suffer,
especially if that suffering is intensive and unnecessary” (954). Going back to what my sophomore teacher was
saying, I think that a lack of service in my life thus far in college has me in
a rut. First semester I felt as if I
simply didn’t have any time to help anyone; more than that, I felt
intrinsically deserving of selfish behavior because of the pledgeship I was
going through. After coming home for
Christmas break, my parents pulled me aside several days before I was slated to
head back to Austin and basically told me that they were concerned about the
selfishness they had seen from me over the prior month. Having somebody actually point that out to me
finally made me aware that even if I didn’t want to think it, I had a problem
in college that I needed to fix.
I was never a huge
fan of community service in high school, but I believe that my school’s heavy
insistence on its requirement basically subconsciously helped me out. By this I mean that by being “forced” to do
it, I was indirectly helping myself out.
Thus, looking forward to the next few years I have at UT, I’m going to
make a conscious effort to get out into Austin and serve others less fortunate
than me. I know I’m not an inherently
selfish person, I just need some help getting back on the right track. Indeed, I know that I’m capable of sympathy
and compassion for others, as evidenced by this blog entry I wrote for the Earthlings documentary: “Becoming
more aware of my own feelings is an understatement of the profound emotions I
experienced throughout Earthlings. Indeed, I've long been aware of
animal cruelty (and seen several, short videos and commercials from PETA and
SPCA over the years), but never before have I seen a work as long and detailed
as Earthlings. So as cliche as it sounds, I became more
aware of my compassion and empathy toward these creatures. There was a scene in
which a bull has his throat slit and the camera zooms in on his panicked eyes
for several seconds. For me, this was the most powerful scene of the entire
documentary. At that moment, I really did feel the pain and fear he was
experiencing, and that was a profound revelation for me.”
My passion for serving others has never been a large part
of my life, but as I’m confronted with some of the challenges of adult life, I
see how important it is to do good for others.
Performing service and other types of outreach in one’s community is
essential to living a healthy life; by aiding others, we indirectly aid
ourselves by building up our sense of self-ethics. I remember a time back in the fall where some
of my friends and I went to a middle school to tutor some kids in math—the one
act of community service I performed all semester. While I felt as if the whole activity was a
burden before I got there, as soon as I started helping to tutor the kids, I
immediately noticed how happy I felt. I
left that school that brisk, fall day feeling in enormously high spirits. I’m going to make it my mission to rediscover
that sympathetic joy, to do more service for the remainder of my days here so
that I may be a happier, and most importantly, more confident being certain in
what his place in the community is.
Word Count:
With Quotes: 1602
Without Quotes: 1436
