"Prompt: Do we need other people in order to understand ourselves? Plan and write an esay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples. You must use examples taken from your reading, studies, experiences, or observation. "
I do believe that understanding other people is neccessary to understand ourselves. Being exposed to the way others think or feel can influence you in many ways whether you agree or disagree or however you feel it still opens your eyes to something about yourself. Talking to others and learning from others not only teaches you about the world but you can take that knowledge and reflect it and apply it to yourself to better understand yourself and make yourself better.
For my summer reading one of the books I read was The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green. The story is a great coming of age tale of this young Jewish boy, Jacob, and how he developes among the craziness of his family and home life. But the way JAcob comes into play in this essay is through his relationships with his father, Abram, and his brother, Asher. Jacob's father is constantly putting JAcob under immense pressure to be ther perfect son and the ideal, most involved boy in the Temple. Then you have Asher who is rebellious, he has girlfriends, he listens to rock n roll, he parties, everything Abram hates and that JAcob is too terrified to do, at first. But as the book continues JAcob becomes more exposed to the two men's true personlaities and he understands them. Through understanding his father and brother, Jacob learns a lot about himself. Inspired by Asher, Jacob realizes he hates the pressure Abram is constantly putting on him and that he is done doing things he doesn't want to do. Inspired by Abram, Jacob sees that he doesn't want to be too much like his older brother. Jacob admires Asher's freedom and ability to be defiant, but too much of that may cause Jacob lose sense of himself and his moral fiber.
One of the books I read for my Independent Reading was Extreme, which is Sharon Osbourne's autobiography. I learned so much from this book, and I know that might be shocking, but that's only because you don't understand Sharon. Sharon's story taught me about faith, the strength of love and that I'm stronger than I give myself credit for. Sharon is a beautifully strong person who knows who seh is and is proud of that. Through her book I realized Sharon and I are a lot alike in character, which made me really reflect on myself and certain experiences and made me see that up until then I was letting my self conscious thoughts, and other people's thoughts keep me down.
I am a very social person, I absolutely love having discussions and talking to people to learn how they think. You can be exposed to so many radical and different ways of thinking through talking to people. One of my absolute favorite people to talk to is my best friend Chris. I'm not exaggerating when I say he knows me better than I know myself. If I'm thinking something or feeling a certain way that I don't want to or don't want to admit to, he can see it and he will me make me own up to it because it's not healthy to deny how you truly feel. He helps me better understand myself because he points out and notices things in me that I don't see and he listens and helps me understand why I'm thinking or feeling a certain way.
Recently my boyfriend of three years dumped me. I can't say it came to me as a surprise so it didn't "destroy" me or anything, but it did, however, make me seriously doubt myself as a person, which is horrible. Then another friend of mine, Mark Damon, with two statements, made me realize what a huge mistake I was making. The first quotes is "1...2...3...Get over it!," which was meant to tell me that while it is an unfortunate happening it's not the end of the world and that I shouldn't let it consume all of me. The other quote was "Janelle, you can sit around thinking about a [bad person], or talking about a [bad person], but they're still going to be a [bad person]," which said to me yeah I can sit around and cry about it all, but it isn't going to change anything and that life is still going to go on so I might as well get over it and enjoy moving on. The words of my friend made me realize something about myself, which has been confirmed by many others, that if I let my mind wonder and analyze everything so much I will be putting me up against myself and making everything seem much graver that they are. I should just be enjoying life, having fun, and not worrying so much.
Think about your favorite song lyric. What do those song lyrics say about you? We all go around quoting songs, poets, movies, authors, why do we do it? Well most of the time it's because the quote meant something to us, said something we connected to somehow, it pointed out something that's in us. That's another example of understanding yourself through understanding others.
Through talking, listening, understanding others we take the knowledge and insight they provide us with and often times it can lead to greater understanding of ourselves. You can learn so much about yourself through the way others see you, or the world, or themselves. There's way too much in the world for one person to see, so why not let others help you fill in the blanks?
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