This I Believe- Strive in what you're good at- forget everything else
01 September 2010
I believe in a certain statement stated by John Wooden, the famous UCLA basketball coach, and this was something he strongly believed in. He believed that you can’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. This statement caught my eye because although it is simple, it is very motivational and inspiring to me. This concept is very true and speaks to many things that have happened in my so far short but great life. This belief is very strong and reigns true in my life.
Everyone has had things, both good and bad, that have happened and possibly even altered their life. When I came across this concept it was on a list of many Woodenisms and it stuck out to me because it applies to everyone even if they won’t admit it. I have not always stuck true to this concept but I have tried my hardest to stick to it and have so far succeeded in life but with roadblocks. There are many things I can do and many I cannot. I attempt to try my hardest to do what I can but sometimes I fail.
Not everyone can succeed in life at everything and this is what my belief says. There is at least 1 thing someone is good at and you have to pursue that one thing. Don’t keep trying and failing to do the thing you know you can’t do. I went into high school thinking that I was going to get perfect grades and be able to go to a really good college. I decided to attempt to take AP courses and I ended up not succeeding. Last year I decided to take AP Biology and Math Analysis and failed them first semester. I dropped them and took easier courses and decided maybe a super nice college wasn’t for me. I have been volunteering at the hospital for the past few years and have started to enjoy the medical field. I decided to graduate high school and go into the nursing program at Valley College.
My attraction to becoming a nurse has grown as I have continued to volunteer at the hospital. I decided that I would go to Valley College and after my completion of the program there I would transfer to a 4 year college to further my nursing education or pursue some aspect of film studies. This concept of not letting what you cannot do affect what you can do has really guided me. Even if I failed at my original plan it led me to do something that I am very interested in and that seems more promising. Sometimes these roadblocks happen to make you realize there are other things in life than just the one thing you feel dedicated to doing. Maybe you were not supposed to do what you had originally planned to do. There are many other possibilities that you can do if you put your heart to it and if you do not let your failures affect your successes. The choice is yours because then again, this is what I believe.
This I Believe "The Written Word"
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24 August 2010
For a seventeen-year-old girl with little life experience, I have many opinions. I have accumulated knowledge on a wide variety of subjects and feel that my views are true to what they will be seventeen years down the road. As I sat thinking of one belief in particular I reflected on all I have lived through and the lessons I have learned from the events that make up existence. The thought that occurred to me was that my existence is, in relation to all that has occurred throughout history, insignificant. That got me thinking of what really is significant, what will influence not only my life and the lives of those in my generation and those to come and this is what I came up with.
This I believe.The written word can color opinions and alter outlooks on lives long after the author is dead and gone. Books, essays, and quotations have been passed on for hundreds and thousands of years, and not just because of history. They are used for knowledge, not just facts but experiences from times that are long gone. I can not even count how many hours of my life I have spent in Puritanical society, on trail for witchcraft and adultery, in the South as a young slave trying to understand the injustice of the world, and in biblical times following teachings of an almighty power. Through these words I have a new understanding of the extremities that fear can push people to, prospective of how good we truly have it now a days, and a set of morals and examples to try and model my life after.
There is also a sense of escape that only reading brings. Everyone has difficulties in life, and I am no exception. Though I am normally seen as someone with a cheery disposition, I have watched my family fall apart not once, not twice but three times. I have been subjected to abuse in my own household on multiple occasions, and I have been the middleman for my battling parents since I was four. I have faced ridicule on regular basis, and there have been many times when I hid behind a smile and times when I gave into my depression. But through it all, I have always found comfort in leaving my life and entering another, distant from the reality of life and in a simpler place where outcomes are predictable because everyone always ends up happy by the end. And more than anything, for me, it makes me see that I am not the only one going through it. People have gone through similar things and turned out okay. When I feel alone and confused an interior centuries of knowledge are out there to use to better the way I live my life.
Books take you on an adventure, anywhere you want to go and when it is all read and done, there is always another. No one person will ever read every book, just as no one person will ever know all the facts. As long as there is another story to explore, another escape to take, I feel I can survive any hardships that are thrown at me, I feel I can continue to have hope that maybe the mess that life creates can be resolved in the final chapter, that eventually things will come full circle and things will be happy and simple, life’s answers finally revealed.
Maybe I hold on to this belief because I hope to influence the world with the words I write. That one day the things I have written and the stories I have told help someone who is struggling to escape the real world or brighten the day of someone just looking for an ease of boredom, to make someone that feels alone in the world see that there someone understands what they are going through. It’s pretty loftily but it is what I strive for.
There will never be anything to replace the written word; no movie or music (which is hard for me to say because my iPod takes second place only to a good book) can do the same.
But then again, this is just what I believe.
This I Believe "Still Images"
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23 August 2010
When I was nine years old, my father took me to the Bronx Zoo—a trip I might not remember except for the fact that the purpose of our trip was to teach how to use the Ansco box camera I would use to record the epic cross country train trip our family took in the summer of 1959. The day we went to the zoo, Daddy showed my how load a roll film, frame a picture through the side-mounted viewfinder, how to advance the film, and how to remove the film. The first pictures I took that Sunday afternoon of seals and the ones that I took that summer of Yellowstone Falls, Old Faithful, and the Columbia Glacier are fixed in my mind, as are the thousands and thousands of images of pictures I have taken since and the thousands more I have examined as a student of photography.
I believe in still images.
Still images have allowed me to peer into the lives of people I could have known no other way. I know Karsh’s Winston Churchill, Steichen’s Gloria Swanson, Lange’s Migrant Mother, Sander’s bricklayer, Bourke-White’s South African miners, and Smith’s country doctor.
Still images have sometimes stunned me. Nachtwey’s of war torn South Africa and the Middle East; and Burtynsky’s of the man altered landscapes of Vermont and California—aesthetically beautiful and emotionally horrifying.
Still images have allowed me to see myself an exhilarated blond-haired bespectacled 10 year-old “flying” down Constant Avenue on my English racer. They have allowed me to go back and see the faces of my parents as young adults—the vital parents I remember as a child. Still images let me see my brother paddling his beloved kayak in perfect health at sundown on Lake Champlain and to see my children dressed as superheroes, soccer players, and graduates. They have permitted me to revisit countless Christmases and birthday parties, in short, to recapture significant moments in my life-- a legacy in snapshots of the people closest to me whom I love and admire.
Still images move me. They have taught me to pay attention to what is simple and complex, beautiful and disturbing. They have taught me about compassion, gratitude, and responsibility. Through the camera and the still image, I can fix people, places, and events so that I can study them and understand them over time.
This I Believe-Patience is a Virtue
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29 August 2010
Many things were changing for me when I was eleven. I was in the middle of fifth grade, Slinky T-Shirts and Gaucho pants were in style, and I couldn’t wait to get my braces on. I was obsessed with Kelly Clarkson and Gwen Stefani, and all my friends had first generation iPod nanos. Art class was in my schedule everyday, and newsletters were sent home with me, weekly, letting my parents know what was going on with my class homework-wise. In the midst of my crooked planet, my brother was in the process of buying his first “adult” car.
Now, when I say “adult”, what I don’t mean is a 2000 Ford Explorer that was raised about ten feet above the ground and for which my teenage brother had to pull up his baggy jeans in order to get into. Yes, his first car may have been just a tad bit ridiculous. In this case, he had his eye on a black Saab Wagon. Still, this was not a wise choice occurring to our parents, because it was “a foreign car, and sometimes they stop manufacturing the parts for it”. My brother still went through with it.
It was late on a school night when my brother stopped by to show off his new form of transportation. Indeed, he had purchased the black Saab Wagon, and it was parked in our driveway. Admirable amounts of “Ooo”s and “Ahh”s came from the small crowd of my family, some were sarcastic. My sister and I marveled at the car’s leather interior while my brother popped the hood to show my dad the engine.
After I finished inspecting the car and giving it my smile of approval, my brother stood in between my sister and I and said one simple phrase: “Patience is a virtue, girls.”
Now, at the ripe, young age of eleven, I took this as, “If you stand still in the lunch line, God will give you a new pair of shoes.” But as I have grown up, this expression has grown with me. Even though I didn’t understand completely what my hero of a brother was saying when I was eleven, I am beginning to comprehend its meaning five years later.
I was reminded of this childhood event while I was standing in line at Target at ten o’clock at night with a cart full of school supplies. Every line was filled with customers, and I thought to myself, Why are there so many people shopping here at night? Then I realized that I was one of those shoppers as well. I was beginning to feel restless, leaning against my cart, in a line that was far too long for my liking. Then, without warning, the all too familiar voice of my brother echoed in between each of my ears, “Patience is a virtue, girls.” This I believe.