#9

The Ellison Family

My mother, Terrie, and my father, Mike, are in their 18th year of marriage. I am their only child. Though we don't eat dinner as a family regularly, or take family vacations, the three of us have a pretty good relationship with one another. One thing that I find strange about my mother is the fact that she grew up just down the street from where we live now, yet she has one of the most southern accents I've ever heard. For example, she pronounces the word 'wash' as 'worsh', and the word 'one' as 'own'. One quirk about my father is that he is majorly obsessed with Indiana Jones. In our living room there is a life-size statue of Indiana Jones. He has crafted various artifacts fromo the movie series out of things like clay and cardboard. I can't even try to count the number of fedoras (the type of hat "Indy" wears) he owns. My parents relationship with each other, is basically normal. They hug and are affectionate toward each other. They spend time with one another. Of course there is the occasional argument here and there.
Also there is my grandmother, Margie. Margie is what I call her. We have the best relationship of all. She is my mother's stepmother, yet the two of us are more alike than my mother and I. I try to be sure I take her out to dinner at least once a week. Ever since my grandfather, her husband, died, the two of us have gotten closer than ever. I feel like I can tell her anything. But have you ever heard of those old ladies, often referred to as "crazy cat ladies"? Well.. meet Margie. She's less crazy, more just.. cat lady. You can hardly ever see her without one of her many cat-affiliated sweatshirts. She has many cats at home, and she also goes out every morning to help feed feral cats and dogs around her neighborhood. But hey, you do what you like, and you like what you do.

#8

"After all the discussions in class about Oedipus, Harold Crick and the seemingly endless circle of fate and responsibility, what do you walk away with knowing, understanding, doubting, or wondering?"

Well I've always wondered whether or not things happen for a reason. I still can't figure it out. I'm not even going to worry about it though. There doesn't have to be an answer. I think I'm just going to go with my belief, which seems to be a lot of other people's beliefs, that your freewill controls your fate, and your fate controls your freewill. So in all actuality there is neither. There is only you, your person, your mind. Fate is nothing but wanting to have something to rely on or to blame. If you do something you weren't supposed to do or something that was wrong to have done, you can just say that it was your fate. You can just say that what you did happened for a reason. That way, if you do something right, or correctly you can just say that you were using freewill and that what you did had nothing to do with your fate. If that makes any sense. Your life is your responsibility. Therefore, what you do in your life is also your responsibility. So doesn't it only make sense that if there really is fate, then your fate is your responsibility. If your fate is to kill your father and marry your mother, those are things you're doing yourself. Yeah it sucks, but what can you do? Oedipus didn't know what he was doing. But what if you put the situation outside of the fact that he was told his prophecy and outside of the fact that it was his mother and father. Would you not say that it was his responsibility that he killed a man? Would you not say that it was his responsibility that he married a woman and had children? That is just how I look at this whole fate vs freewill thing. That's why I like sudoku.

#7

The Ultimate Question: Do you believe that you have a freewill, or do you believe in fate?

I'm not sure why, but this is a difficult question for me to answer. I've always looked at the situation as being that you are your fate, so in a sense, isn't that freewill? I don't believe that things are decided for me, no, but I do somewhat believe that everything happens for a reason. I guess if I had to choose, I would pick freewill, because you can do something unexplainable, that had a good outcome but that doesn't mean it was predetermined that you were going to do that, but that also doesn't mean there wasn't a reason you did it, even though it wasn't intended.. If that makes any sense. Partially why I've put off answering this question for so long is because my mind keeps contradicting itself. Freewill. I choose freewill. That doesn't mean I'm right. I could be completely wrong. Of course everyone could be completely wrong. No one knows.. No one will ever know, not until they're dead at least. You, yourself go to the grocery store to buy a carton of milk. Skim milk.. because you ran out last night and you want a bowl of cereal. Rice Krispies cereal. You can't have rice krispies without milk.. milk's the whole point!! snap, crackle pop.. okay so you go to the grocery store right, because you need to so you yourself are doing it on your own. That's freewill. But that's not to say that your freewill isn't predestined. Is it? I should probably get some sleep..

#6

Live a long life, but remain known only to a small group of people..

ORRRR

Live large, die in my early twenties, but be insanely famous for the next 1,000 years..

If I had to pick between the two, I would definitely choose to live a longer life. I want a family, I want grandchildren, I want to see what happens to the world as I progress through life. I don't need to be known by everyone. As long as I'm famous to the people I love, that's all that matters. Dying early is not worth fame, especially if I'm not going to be alive while I'm famous.
I didn't have to think about this choice very hard. Sure, we all want to be famous at one point, but having a family is ten times greater than any fame or fortune. In the words of Forrest Gump, "Thats all I have to say about that."

#5

When I was young, my favorite book of all time was Rainbow Fish. I remember having my mom check it out of my kindergarten's library almost every week, until she eventually bought the book for me. Of course what initially drew me to it was it's colorful and shiny cover. The book itself though, I could relate to. It's about a fish with unusually shiny and colorful scales who doesn't want to share his scales with any of the other fish, so they stop talking to him. He asks for advice from the Octopus lady..oracle woman.. and she tells him to share his shiny scales with the other fish. He does and then he's left with one shiny scale but he doesn't mind because after that, everyone had one shiny scale and he had friends. I could relate to it so well because, as an only child, I had a big issue with sharing. I remember slightly agreeing with Rainbow Fish, thinking that he shouldn't share. That was the beesssttt book.

#4

"The world, friend Govinda, is not perfect or on a slow journey toward perfection; no, it is perfect every moment; all sin already bears its forgiveness within itself; every little boy already bears the old man within himself, every infant bears death, every dying man bears eternal life. No one is able to look at someone else and know how far along on his journey he is; in the highwayman and dice player lurks a Buddha, in the Brahman lurks the highwayman."

p. 77 Siddhartha

"No one is able to look at someone else an know how far along on his journey he is.." because he, himself does not know how far along on his journey he is. Westerners, we believe that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. One of our main values is striving for success and attaining that through money, popularity, religion, etc. The main value with the Eastern philosophy is their self and the world surrounding them. They believe in moving forward through self-development. What this passage from Siddhartha is stating is that life doesn't need to get better because life is eternal. "The world...is not perfect or on a slow journey toward perfection; no, it is perfect every moment..." The world is perfect every moment because everything eventually contradicts itself. Death cancels out life, forgiveness cancels out sin, etc. The irony of this all is that Herman Hesse, the author, was German, therefore was raised in the Western mentality.

#3

The conundrum of high school.. this is tough. Maybe it's that we all say how much we don't care what anyone else thinks so we're trying to be independent and original, and we believe it too.. but really, we all care. When we go to the mall, into a shop, pick up something off the rack, we're secretly thinking what people would say or think if we wore it into school the next day. The way we act is based so much off of the media and others around us, yet we constantly state how original we are. Is that a paradox? Maybe it's a paradox for teenagers, I'm not sure it is for high school though. Maybe it's that we're taking all of these classes we know hardly anything about, just because we have to. We try so hard and do so much work for classes just to get a good grade, just to pass the class and move on. We're trying so hard because we all want to get out as soon as possible, but really high school is comfort for most. Because I bet anything that when we finally do get out, out into "the real world" that we'll be begging to come back. College is going to be a very rude awakening for most of us, but in the end, it has to be done. Is that the paradox of high school? IS ITTT?!