Lessons Learned

I figure a good way to start my blogging career is by getting out some of things that have been swimming around my brain lately. I have been lucky enough so far to enjoy 22 years on this earth. I say lucky enough because I have been in more than one situation in my life where I was all too sure the end was right around the corner. I guess through these experiences I have become a bit more of reflective person. I’ve learned a lot in my life and hopefully I have many more realizations to come but I figure I might as well get a few things down on paper. So here are some of my opinions, about how I TRY and live and what I spend my time thinking about when I have a chance.

Since many of the things I have found to be all too true have also proven to be all too cliché, I guess I should start there. Growing up advice is shoved down your throat at incredible rate. Perhaps this is why so many young people stop listening. The term cliché and “corny” start coming to mind as soon as someone starts to ramble on about how this world works and how you should act accordingly. Well cliché and corny, I have found, to be synonyms for well founded truth. Advice that was offered to me years and years ago that I simply forgot or wouldn’t recognize as valid has come back to me in the form of hard learned lessons. Though I believe experience is the best teacher, I also believe it would do us all of a world of good to heed the advice of others a bit further along in their journey than we are ourselves.

Perspective is 99.8% of life. Everything that happens in your life, good or bad, sculpts how you perceive and react to the world. Common courtesy and “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” are horribly over looked in today’s culture. When we start to think about where people have been, we can have a better understanding of where they are, and where they are headed. Introspectively, if you understand the things that influence your beliefs, opinions, and consequently your actions, you will have a much more rounded view of how to handle yourself in a fashion that will get you to where you want to be instead simply where you will end up. Letting your situation determine your actions allows the people and things in your situation to determine your future.

Whether you think you can or you think you can not, you’re right. Confidence is absolutely critical to success. Clearly arrogance is an entirely different subject, however, confidence breeds success. People follow leaders with confidence and leaders want followers who are confident as well. Confidence is evident in every aspect of your life whether you have it or lack it. Once you truly believe in yourself and realize that your success is directly proportionate to the effort that you are willing to put forth, paths to achieve your goals will become much clearer. This seemingly simple realization leads you to a state of mind where no one can hold you back, other than yourself. Be decisive, and once your decision is made don’t let anything or anyone tell you any different. Thinking long term and working short term will keep your heart focused on your goal while keeping your mind and body focused on what you must do to achieve that goal.
To achieve anything in life, whether it is a one mile race or 10 year goal, there are three steps: initiative, determination and hope. Initiative gets you started by providing the primary gust to work toward accomplishing something. Initiative is also sometimes hard to muster. You must realize that every marathon starts with one step, as every century starts with one second, as every painting starts with one brush stroke. In this same fashion every day passing is a wasted opportunity to achieve your dreams and to become the person you want to be. Simply put, the best time to get started is now. In all honesty though, initiative will only take you so far. After a while we all grow weary and when the end is not within an eye shot, we tire and falter. This is natural, therefore, it’s time to change gears and realize that if accomplishing what we want to accomplish was that easy, it most likely wouldn’t be worth it. This is where determination comes into play. Determination motivates us through the tough time when our initiative has sputtered and we haven’t yet the hope to see our journey to the end. Honestly this is the time when the men are separated from the boys and the girls from the women, this is the time when we must look inside ourselves to find out what we are truly made of; this is gut check time ladies and gentlemen (for help in this area read above about confidence). If you really want the reward, you will realize that this is not the time to slow down, but rather the time to push forward even harder because working towards goals is like standing flat footed in a river, if you’re not moving forward, then you are being pushed backwards my friend. Finally, if your confidence, initiative, and determination have not failed you, then now is the time that you can finally start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Take pride in how far you have come, but realize how much further you have to go. Now is the time to realize that you have come far too far to fail. Now is the time to realize that coming up short is not an option because stopping now, or anytime until now, is not only pusillanimous and lazy but even more so, stopping is not an alternative.

"Sweat"

"Sweat" by Zora Neale Hurston takes place in Florida during the spring time, most likely in the early 1900's. The main characters in the story are Sykes and Delia Jones who have been married for 15 years. The marriage was far from desirable. Sykes brought home little money, left Delia at times to go on trips with out her, was physically and verbally abusive to her, and had recently acquired a mistress named Bertha. Sykes constantly yelled at Delia for washing clothes for "the white people." This was Delia's job and apparently she made more money than Sykes ever made at his job, however, Sykes did not let this stop him from harassing Delia about it. The divide between the couple only worsened as time went on, until Sykes unknowingly brought home a catalyst for a horrible future. Sykes brought home a 6 foot rattle snake to scare Delia which of course it did. His pampas speeches about how the snake would stay in the house until he decided otherwise foreshadowed his demise. One day after a huge argument with Delia he returned home to a dark house. Somehow in his fumbling about in the dark he was bitten by the snake. Delia was close enough to try and help him but decided instead to simply let him die in the house because she was fed up with his demeaning, volatile behavior. This story's central theme denounces spousal abuse and being overly indulgent. Sykes abuse towards his wife left him helpless and dieing at the end of the story. Also, he brought the snake bite on himself by leaving the snake in the house, against Delia's wishes, in the first place. I enjoyed the overall plot of the story particularly how Sykes' demoralizing of Delia eventually led to his downfall. At times I was at odds with the dialect the story was written, however, I found it overall different and enjoyable. I found long stretches of this unfamiliar dialogue became difficult to understand but made the conversations, and thereby the story, more believable.

"Slave Girl"

This story is set in the 1840's and varies in location from North Carolina to New York. The narrator, Harriet Jacobs, is 28 years old slave and has 2 children. The father of the children, Samuel Sawyer, is white. Harriet tries to escape to the north but has a long, hard journey in front of her. Samuel Sawyer promises to emancipate the children, a promise that he would not keep. During Harriet's struggle to make it to New York, only the thought of her seeing her children could comfort her. The zeal that Harriet showed to escape the South is incredible. When she arrived in Brooklyin, June of 1842, she was surprised to see many people she recognized. One person she did not recognize, however, was her daughter Louisa. The mother and daughter were finally reunited and could not have happier. Harriet immediately started to look for work. Though finding a job proved difficult, she eventually interviewed with Mary Willis who hired her on the spot. The two immediately bonded and became more than mere employer and employee but rather friends. During all of this Dr. Norcome never stopped looking for Harriet and after his death a family member was sent to Brooklyn to bring Harriet back to North Carolina. All of Harriet's efforts to escape proved only to exacerbate the Norcomes. Obviously Harriet and Mrs. Willis were scared because little did they know that this was the precursor to Harriet's freedom. Mary Willis was not willing to see this happen so she talked Harriet into going to Boston. After much harassment from the Norcomes as to where Harriet was, Mary Willis decided to purchase Harriet's freedom from the Norcomes. Then finally one day Harriet opened a letter from Mrs. Willis and a bill of sell fell out of the envelope. Harriet was finally free. She returned to Brooklyn a free woman and eventually even went back to North Carolina and visited her Grandmother's house. She explained at the end that she wrote her story so no one could ever assert that it never happened.

"At The 'Cadian Ball"

“At The ‘Cadian Ball” by Kate Chopin took place in Lousiana in the late 19th century. Clarisse and Alcee are the main characters and live on a farm together with their servant Bruce. Clarisse wants to marry Alcee but he has not mentioned anything of the sort to her. Clarisse decides to try and make Alcee jealous; however this backfires when Alcee storms into the room and makes a scene in front of all her friends. Later a storm hits the farm with no warning and a voracious cyclone takes out eight acres of Alcee’s crops. This is a huge blow to Alcee finances and he is enraged. Alcee explains that as a man, he can go toe to toe with any other man, however, when God and a woman join forces against him as they have, he simply can’t take it. Alcee starts to drink and decides to go to the ‘Cadian Ball where he will look for a woman. Clarisse sees him leaves and though Bruce tries to prevaricate the truth, Clarisse forces him to tell her where Alcee has gone. Clarisse loves Alcee and doesn’t want him to be with another woman so she follows him to the ball. There are many people at the ball including Bobinot and Calixta. Bobinot loves Calixta so much that the thought of her simply drives him crazy. When Alcee arrives at the ball he zeroes in on Calixta because she is so undeniably beautiful. As they lie in the dark, Alcee kissing Calixta neck, Clarisse storms in and explains that something has happened at the house and Alcee needs to come home. Alcee obliges and starts home with Clarisse. Meanwhile as Bobinot takes Calixta home she agrees, in a very awkward, temperate tone to marry Bobinot. She does refuse though to even kiss him that night. Also as Clarisse and Alcee head home Clarisse admits that nothing is wrong at home and she simply could not stand the though of Alcee being gone for a long period of time with another woman. As they confess their love for one another, the play ends.I didn’t particularly enjoy this play because there was not much to read into or figure out. It was very straight forward and obviously a piece of a larger work. The characters were interesting, however, and I believe that if the story becomes more interesting as it goes on that my opinion could change.

"The Storm"

"The Storm" by Kate Chopin is a continuation of the short story "At the 'Cadian Ball." As the story begins we find ourselves in a very simular setting as we were left by previous story. Bobinot sits at a store waiting for a storm to pass with his four year old son Bibi. Bobinot and Calixta were married as promised in "At the 'Cadian Ball." As the storm rolls in, we are taken to Calixta who is sewing but as she realizes a storm is coming she goes outside to take in some clothes she had hung out to dry. Just as it starts to really rain heavily, the audacious Alcee rides up on his horse and asks if he can wait in the gallery for the rain to pass. However, it was simply raining too hard and he was forced to come inside. Calixta was becoming more and more worried about Bibi and Bobinot. This led to a couple fervent embraces by Calixta and Alcee and suddenly their passion for one another had returned. As the rain came pouring down, Calixta worry for her family faded and her longing for Alcee increased exponentially. Though both married, the two made sweet love. As the storm cleared up Alcee left, knowing it would not be long until Bobinot returned. The culpable duo said their goodbye and soon after Bobinot and Bibi returned with "shrimps" for Calixta. Bobinot seemed to know something was askew in Calixta behavior but Chopin leaves us to infer exactly what Bobinot was thinking. Alcee returns home and write his wife, Clarisse, and explains that though he misses her and the children that they should stay gone for another month. In the end Clarisse was thrilled to receive the letter from Alcee. Chopin declared at the end of the story that the storm had passed and everyone was happy again, thus driving home the theme of this story that ignorance is bliss.

"A Jury of Her Peers"

“A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell is a story about murder and the search for evidence there after. One day Mr. Hale came to see Mr. Wright to talk to him about getting a telephone wire installed in their neighborhood. However, when Mr. Hale arrived at Mr. Wright’s house, he found Mrs. Wright looking confused rocking back and forth in her rocking chair non stop and when he asked her where John was she calmly explained that he was upstairs dead. The sheriff, an attorney, Mr. Hale came to the Wright house to go over the evidence and find a motive ,while the women gathered belongings for Mrs. Wright who was in jail. The men made several derogatory comments toward the women and even directly stated that the women wouldn’t know a clue if they found one. As the women gathered Mrs. Wright belongings they talked about how beautiful and enthusiastic Mrs. Wright was before she married John. They all seemed to agree that marrying John was much more detrimental to Mrs. Wright’s life than they had all realized prior to the murder. They said John had choked the life right out of Mrs. Wright. As the women talked they came across a quilt that looked like Mrs. Wright had hurriedly stitched. Then they found a bird cage with a broken hinge. Last, they found a canary which apparently was the only bright spot left in Mrs. Wright’s life that had been choked to death. This was clearly the motive for which the men had been searching. John had choked the life out of Mrs. Wright and her pet canary and in turn Mrs. Wright returned the favor to a sleeping John Wright. Though the women did not advocate murder they sympathized with Mrs. Wright enough to keep this evidence hidden from the men. The men were far too cocky and arrogant to even ask if the women had found any evidence and the story inferred that without a motive, Mrs. Wright would probably not be convicted. Thus, Mrs. Wright was judged by a jury of her own peers because the very women that the sheriff seemed to castigate, not only solved the crime before he could, but also decided Mrs. Wright’s fate with their sealed lips and chicanery.