LR Midterm
We
began the school year, in this world literature class, with a series of
questions: Who am I? Why am I here?
Where am I going? We were told that these
would be the constant guides to our pilgrimage.
These questions would help us evaluate ourselves in relation to our
world. We first tried to answer these
questions by figuring out what it meant to be a college student. We looked at literary examples of college
students and held several in class discussion to answer this question. Then, we tried to figure out what our role
was in attending the
Where am I going?
It is a question I have spent many hours thinking about, probably more than I should have. In today’s world, we often think that the present has a great affect on the future. While this is true to certain extent, we often let this get in the away of living the present. I see it all around me at UT, especially in the business school. Students think that if they don’t have a super high GPA, don’t take all of the right classes and don’t do all the right internships that they won’t go anywhere in life. This mode of thinking is infectious to the community, and it only serves to stop people from enjoying the present. We often forget that a GPA, chosen major or the internships completed really don’t have that great of an effect on your life. Even the person without these great things lives a happy and successful life. So why is it we insist that these help us achieve the good life? Freshmen at Yale were warned of this danger during their Freshmen Address in 1985: “What I wish you to avoid, as you continue your journey, is the desire to try to arrange all of the future now. I want you to hold yourselves ready but not rigid.”[1] I want to emphasize the last words from this speaker, “ready but not rigid.” The speaker is not telling us to go blindly in the future. No, the speaker wants us to be prepared for the future, but not rigid in our plans. He wants us to remain open to all possibilities and be prepared for as many of them as possible.
After almost completing a year at UT, I have realized that it is okay to answer this question with a resounding ‘I don’t know.’ It is okay to accept that I don’t know where I am going in the future or what I will be doing one year or even one week from now. I will, instead, “hold [myself] ready but not rigid.”[3] Even though I don’t really know where I will be going in the future, I won’t be totally lost either. I have learned the importance of several principles that will guide me on my pilgrimage. These principles are having a good attitude, maintaining a sense of restlessness and keeping good relationships with those we interact with.
My experience at UT has been mixed with times when I could lay outside all afternoon reading a book for pleasure because of the lack of schoolwork and other times when I would stay up for most of the night every day of the week in order to get my schoolwork done. During these times of stress, I have seen how my attitude towards my work and what I am doing greatly affects the quality of my work and more importantly, the amount of happiness in my life. While I have sometimes struggled to keep a good attitude, I know that thinking positively is a very powerful thing. It helps people achieve things they never thought they could do at an extremely high level of quality, and feel good about doing it, too. Negative thoughts are natural, but too many of them smother the joy that surrounds us. “We are all pilgrims whose progress is marked by sloughs of despond as well as what Churchill called ‘the broad uplands’ of human experience.”[4] I have learned that not thinking positively just isn’t worth the time and emotional drain. A good attitude, on the other hand, helps a person in everything they do and results in a happy person whose uplands spread as far as the eye can see. Earlier I mentioned how negative thinking can be infectious to a community. The same is true of positive thinking and having a good attitude. These spread through a community like wildfire and increase the overall happiness of the community. This is what we should strive for and focus our energy on.
While
a positive attitude is extremely important and will keep me happy, I have also
realized that I must at the same time maintain a sense of restlessness – a distrust
of the surrounding complacency. This
principle of restlessness is what makes me want to do something better than it
has ever been done before. It pushes me
to do something differently, to question my world and to not be happy with the
answers that are given to me. Instead,
it drives me to find my own answers. Finding
my own answers has been one of the most fulfilling experiences I have had at
UT. It has made me realize that I really
can do whatever I set my mind to. Unfortunately,
a strong sense of restlessness can sometimes transform into dissatisfaction and
thus, unhappiness. In “Stanzas from the
Grand Chartreuse,” Matthew Arnold wrote, “Wandering between two worlds, one
dead, / The other powerless to be born, / With nowhere yet to rest my head, /
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.”[5] Like
The greatest of these principles that I have learned is the importance of my relationships with other people. Our relationships with the people around us are what define us, whether we like it or not. We may want to believe that our ideas, beliefs or maybe our life goals define us, and they may define us, but only in our own minds. The people we interact with, though, will remember how we treated them or how we made them feel before they will ever remember what we believe in or what our ideals are. This means, then, that if we had a vision that we want to share with the rest of the world it would spread faster if it were based on the empathetic connection it makes with people rather than the intellectual need it fulfills. I will remember this in the future as I try to improve my surrounding world.
The
I propose no grand
vision, because any specific vision I may come up with will ultimately be
lacking: “any model of the self, positive or negative, will limit our capacity
to help. Each form we identify with,
each role we attach to, is ultimately incomplete and transient.”[10] Instead, I present a credo of life. I love life.
I love people.
I love to have conversations with people about nothing and about everything. I will live my life with this love and energy at its center. I will remember where I came from and who has impacted my life in a meaningful way. I will live life to the best of my ability. Whether I become an ethically-minded business person working to improve the quality of my clients’ lives, a pro-bono lawyer representing those groups with no traditional voice in our society, a scientist researching ways for humanity to spread among the stars, a representative of US interests abroad working for greater cooperation and understanding, or simply a husband and father with the interests of those around him in his heart, I will be that person and fulfill that role to the best of my ability. I will make it my central purpose and strive to be the best at whatever I choose to do. I will not rest until I am the person that I envision today. That is all I can promise myself. That is all my vision, at its root, can ever consist of. No matter what course my life may take, I will live it with these principles and love of life. If I live by these principles, I will inevitably make the world a better place.
Do I have the strength to “carry the cross of the redeemer” as Joseph Campbell asks? I don’t know. I think I might, and I will definitely try to. I will try to guide society through my example of a good life. That is the best I can do, and all I can promise.
Word Count: 1,566
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