auto-bio english paper
Life is a decision a person makes, a decision whether or not to be yourself or a mold. I found myself this year. While scavenging through math notebooks and chemistry notes to find the answer to the study guides that are high school, I somehow became more of me and less of them. I am now less of a carbon copy of an apathetic teenager who would love nothing more then to stay at the movie theater all hours of the night to live life through the eyes of a glamorous fool and more of someone who would rather sit on the beach with her friends living life through her own.
As I wandered into the brand new high school, the apprehension and tension that had always swelled in my subconscious was lifted. Maybe because I was now the oldest class or that I’d left a lot of people I didn’t quite dig behind, but I didn’t feel the need to wear a mask. In my previous years as a student I had only opened up to my friends, letting the rest of the populous remain indifferent or curious as to whom I was. If I looked as if I was one of them, I would be. Now I don’t hide the fact that I really don’t like fashion and do not feel the need to spend copious amounts of money when I really only feel the need to own two or three pairs of jeans. That money is better spent on adding several Bob Dylan albums to my already hefty collection.
I have gained a freedom that is more then the addition of responsibilities in the average teenager’s life. Jim Morrison once said that “The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.” I feel I have found this freedom. I express myself how I wish to express myself; I stand in my own reality. I’ve traded in my role for a reality.
Although remaining in my own, I have also become more aware of the other realities around me. Before this year, I seemed to believe in a better world then I do now. I wanted to change everything all at once. I thought if I campaigned and mused enough I could convince my classmates and eventually the entire world that we could make everything better. I was trying to stop a torrential flooding of a yacht by scooping water out with a Dixie cup. Eventually, I realized my efforts would remain fruitless and swam ashore. The sinking ship would need to sink before it could resurface, it would need to be rebuilt and I would need to become an excellent ship builder before I could change its course.
My sinking ship was my idea of peace, well, not exactly peace, but my idea of war. I’d always believed that war and violence were not the answers to whatever issue would come to be. I was looking for a harmony that could not exist. There can not be harmony without two ends of a spectrum. I wanted peace to exist without war. I didn’t want war to be the plausible and concrete, while peace was conceptual. However much I tried to make this feasible, I knew it was not. In eliminating war the world and humanity as a whole would have to change human nature. It is human nature to fight and steal. It is human nature to retaliate. All of these must exist. I can not modify impulse. Still, I refuse to loose hope. I still struggle to understand. I still ask myself as Elvis Costello so eloquently put it “What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?” I realize I can’t change the world, for now, but once I gain the skills to rebuild and knowledge to revive, I will dive back down into the abyss and weld the broken ship back together.
I’ve changed this year. Physically, I am still the same person. I still have brown eyes and still tend to twitch my foot when a class becomes exceptionally boring, but my mindset has changed. I have come to from an ignorant belief that clouded me from making any authentic efforts to change things. I have become me and have left the proverbial them behind. I have removed the mask from both my beliefs and myself.
As I wandered into the brand new high school, the apprehension and tension that had always swelled in my subconscious was lifted. Maybe because I was now the oldest class or that I’d left a lot of people I didn’t quite dig behind, but I didn’t feel the need to wear a mask. In my previous years as a student I had only opened up to my friends, letting the rest of the populous remain indifferent or curious as to whom I was. If I looked as if I was one of them, I would be. Now I don’t hide the fact that I really don’t like fashion and do not feel the need to spend copious amounts of money when I really only feel the need to own two or three pairs of jeans. That money is better spent on adding several Bob Dylan albums to my already hefty collection.
I have gained a freedom that is more then the addition of responsibilities in the average teenager’s life. Jim Morrison once said that “The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.” I feel I have found this freedom. I express myself how I wish to express myself; I stand in my own reality. I’ve traded in my role for a reality.
Although remaining in my own, I have also become more aware of the other realities around me. Before this year, I seemed to believe in a better world then I do now. I wanted to change everything all at once. I thought if I campaigned and mused enough I could convince my classmates and eventually the entire world that we could make everything better. I was trying to stop a torrential flooding of a yacht by scooping water out with a Dixie cup. Eventually, I realized my efforts would remain fruitless and swam ashore. The sinking ship would need to sink before it could resurface, it would need to be rebuilt and I would need to become an excellent ship builder before I could change its course.
My sinking ship was my idea of peace, well, not exactly peace, but my idea of war. I’d always believed that war and violence were not the answers to whatever issue would come to be. I was looking for a harmony that could not exist. There can not be harmony without two ends of a spectrum. I wanted peace to exist without war. I didn’t want war to be the plausible and concrete, while peace was conceptual. However much I tried to make this feasible, I knew it was not. In eliminating war the world and humanity as a whole would have to change human nature. It is human nature to fight and steal. It is human nature to retaliate. All of these must exist. I can not modify impulse. Still, I refuse to loose hope. I still struggle to understand. I still ask myself as Elvis Costello so eloquently put it “What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?” I realize I can’t change the world, for now, but once I gain the skills to rebuild and knowledge to revive, I will dive back down into the abyss and weld the broken ship back together.
I’ve changed this year. Physically, I am still the same person. I still have brown eyes and still tend to twitch my foot when a class becomes exceptionally boring, but my mindset has changed. I have come to from an ignorant belief that clouded me from making any authentic efforts to change things. I have become me and have left the proverbial them behind. I have removed the mask from both my beliefs and myself.