Chapter Ten: The Future

There are moments where I fear the future. Utopia, like Sir Thomas More describes it, it is the perfect world. Before we reach the perfect world, where we will reach the unknown places of happiness, we will probably reach destruction first. People do not appreciate the meaning of peace. We fight with neighbors, with people at work and with our families, but we do not create a state of war. Instead we forget and make up. We re-invent ourselves and become less ignorant towards similar situations. As humans we think of the future of technology and how far it will get us, because it has grown so much in the past 10 years that thinking about a future without flying cars is practically impossible.

Chapter Nine: Mind Games

Trusting your senses is very important. The body gets confused when the temperature changes or when we have a drastic change in a routine. The mind is a mirror of what our eyes see and what we are conditioned to think since we were kids. We imagine that the seas are blue, because our whole life we have been told that, but when you hold water in your hands it becomes clear. Trusting our mind is essential, it is being confident in ourselves, but it can always fail. We are only human and we err as much as any other would. 

Chapter Eight: Chang VS. The World

The genre of Hip-Hop is very powerful in todays society. Chang’s views that the music does truly say how people express themselves about the world is correct. Music, any type, tells a story through another person’s voice. The wave of Hip-Hop relates a lot to the urban communities, and it has become the voice of many politicians who are trying to relate to the scenarios of struggling families. It makes a difference, but I do not think that Chang is making an impact to the entire world. A generation has options to listen to the music they mostly relate to. Music is the freedom of your mind.

Chapter Six: Foucault and the Legal System

I believe that Foucault’s system will never work. The world has good and bad people. There are those who break the rules of being a citizen and deserve to be punished. At the same time I know that there are some people in prison and jails that do not deserve to be there. There are many programs of recovery that would help them out, and it will be a relief on the criminal justice system, because of the overcrowding in jails. Tax paying citizens would as well be relived because it takes a lot of our money to put into a city that has problems with criminals. 

Chapter Four: Forgiveness is an Act of Love

When I was seven, my father walked away on my mother and two brothers at the time. Being in a home with a single income was not easy for my mother and I will never fully understand why we had to go through what we did. For me, my father leaving us was the most tough thing in my life, and I hated him for putting us through hunger and moments of desperate needs. Years later my father came back into the picture, and I had this horrible image of him for what he had done to us I was angry at my mother for giving him a chance to come back when we were doing just fine without him. Forgiveness is an act of love, but does distance really makes the love grow fonder with time?

Three: The Advantage of Studying

In sixth grade we had an exam and while all my classmates spent the weekend studying I had decided to play with the guys instead. I thought that the test would be on the basics and that it was common knowledge. However when it came to the time of the test, I was not ready at all and the questions seem to be in another language because I had no idea what it was talking about. I failed that test, and because of it, I had to take summer school to recuperate that class. That there taught me to always be ahead in my class projects and be ahead on the studying. Procrastinating has never been my favorite thing, and if I am always ahead on my projects then I have time to fix my errors. That was a well important lesson for me, that I will always consider before anything when it comes to work and school.  

Chapter One: “Mommy why do boys don’t cry?”

Growing up being the only girl in the pack was tough. My brothers and cousins did not spoil me and I was not allowed to play with them most of the time. While the girls played with dolls and indoors not to mess up their dresses, I was playing soccer and getting dirty with all of my friends. The moment I realized that not only girls cried, was when we came back from a hiking trip and one of my brothers fell in a hole trying to protect me. We both broke an arm. However, he cried as much as I did, if not more. That moment I realized that not only guys can be tough, but girls too. I believe that not always having a father figure makes someone tough as well, because my mother once told me “Don’t cry, it only makes the boys look tougher” and that will always stay with me forever. 

GO GREEN!

The importance of environmental awareness and activism is high, at least to me and my family. People in the communities work better when others are leading and giving the example. Being “green” is important because we a re trying to savage the planet earth and the future generations. Using high efficiency energy saving lightbulbs and recycling is not something I was doing because of reading a magazine or watching the television, it was something I begun doing because others were doing it. With time people come to the realization that we have to collaborate to the earth somehow, simply because it is a healthier way of living. Eating organic helps not only body by also the environment because we are using products that are grown without any pesticides or animals that are not being fed steroids or being mass produced. If every home in the United States recycled at least once a month, it would make a difference to the earth. 

War Stories

Chapter Five: War Stories

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien was a war story that impacted me from the beginning. This is because as the story develops he describes how a soldier Ted Lavender was shot in the head and killed back in Than Khe, carried double the ammunition and the soldiers wondered a lot if he died because they made him carry all that weight. The other soldiers carried the necessary, however Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was emotionally tied to this woman Martha. She was his God, the perfect woman, however he had not initiated any sentimental feelings because war is tough. The story was very touching for me, since one of my brothers went through war and when he wrote letters he would always “sound” different than before, he always carried a rosary that my mother sent him and a picture of his girlfriend in his helmet. He carried that as a reminder of the memories he left back home. 

Impact on Growth and Development

A memory of my childhood that made impact throughout my entire life, and that had the most importance is the one when my parents decided to move to the United States. At the age of 10, changing schools, moving to another town, and making new friends is hard; however doing all of those changes in a different language and another country made it so much harder for me at 10 years old. The sacrifices my parents made were unbearable because they only thought about the future my brothers and I would have. The opportunity of attending a university, and working in a field that we actually liked (or to even have a job at all). To them the sacrifice they made 12 years ago, has no price compared to how far their children have gotten in life. The only thing they wanted was for the three of us to be professionals and that would make them proud.