“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I would take this well-known statement and tweak it a little: “Don’t judge a class by your friends’ experiences.” At the beginning of the year, I did not have high expectations for this class. Many of my friends warned me about it, even suggested that I drop the class and take a different Honors elective, but a part of me wanted to see what was the cause of all the discontentment. I can now say that it was well worth it to stay in the class; many of the lessons that I learned this year came from this course.
Many of the topics covered in class were interesting and applicable, but the one that impacted me the most was the video by Randy Pausch. I believe that as we grow older, we tend to complicate things. Money, love, fame, status, all these things skew our dreams; when we are younger, our dreams are unaffected by these materialistic things. With our naïve, innocent natures, many of the goals that we have are, in essence, selfless. If we want to be doctors, it’s because it looks cool or we want to save the lives of our dolls; if we want to be mailmen, it’s because we get along with dogs and enjoy walking around; from the small to the big, our decisions and desire are unmarred by the typical acquisitive mindset.
Ask most teenagers what they want to do and the answer will come back tinged with a desire to gain money and status or the desire to be nonconformist. Gone is the desire to change the world: instead of asking what they can do for others, they ask what others can do for them (borrowing from the JFK speech). I know that it is said that children are selfish because they don’t know better, but sometimes it seems like they know more. As we grow older, we take the very simple and change it to the very obscure. To change the world, we must first change ourselves.
To even change ourselves, we must know who we are. As Veblen states, “we are social animals”. A lot of our value and personal definition comes from the way we are perceived by others. Many of our actions are done with the questions: “will others see me doing this?” and “what will they think?” resounding in our minds. One of the most important, yet hardest, changes to make is to the way that we think.
I believe that in order to realize this balance between achieving our dreams and helping others, we need to accept the contradictions that might arise. I am of the firm conviction that a person who is doing what they are passionate about, be it collecting trash, cleaning the sewer, performing neurosurgery, or teaching a room full of bratty college students, if they are passionate, they will make a more lasting and meaningful mark than if they are doing it for ulterior motives.
When I was little, I loved watching the show E.R. My sister was addicted to the show, so by default (I enjoyed mimicking my sisters, down to their likes and dislikes), I was addicted to the show as well. I loved watching the doctors. Blood, open wounds, vomit, these things did not scare me. The more I saw, the more I wanted to be a doctor. I guess I had a hero complex; I wanted to save lives, I wanted to help families, I wanted to know that every day was a success.
As I got older, when people asked me what I wanted to do and I told them doctor, their immediate response was to say, “Oh, that’s a good profession. You’ll make a lot of money.” The first time that I heard that was from my aunt. When she told me that, I responded, “Really? I’ll make a lot of money?” The idea was foreign to me. Since no one in my family was a doctor, I did not know of the status or money that comes with the profession. After a while, I found myself explaining to people that I didn’t want to be a doctor because of the money or status that I would get with the title, but because I was truly passionate about helping people and knowing that I made an impact on someone’s life. One of the reasons that I want to be a Pediatrician is so I can get back in touch with the child in me. They approach many of the biggest problems with an unbiased opinion. My hope is that the time spent with them will help me see the world through less tainted glasses.
Maybe this is a naïve thought, but I believe that if we are more satisfied with who we are and what we are doing, then we won’t feel the need to buy everything that is in sight. We could befuddle advertisers, stop escaping our reality by watching “reality” shows, and actually spend time with our families. It feels like the children these days are deprived of the fondest memories that I have, such as running around during the summer, jumping through sprinklers, actually knowing the neighbors, family dinners, and much more. In ten years, when we ask the 7-12 year olds of right now what they remember about their childhood, all they will see is a big, fat T.V. screen/iPod/Wii.
So how will I live? I am still not quite sure how my life will unfold, but I want to be remembered for my passion, for my love, and for my desire to help others. I don’t want my name to be known by a lot of people. My dad is known throughout the Romanian Seventh-Day Adventist community, and while that may not sound like it is a big deal, there are a lot more Romanian Adventists than you think there really are.
I have seen how frustrating it can be to have people constantly approaching him with questions, asking him to break up disputes, and even say that my father is not fit to be a pastor. I feel as though being known is not so much a blessing as it is a burden. If I am to be known, I would prefer being known intimately by few people, but I want the influence that I have on them to cause them to be in influence on others. Just like the movie “Pay It Forward”, every little action has a resounding effect.
In context with what we’ve learned in class, I want to live in such a way that the Earth does not remember me for what I’ve done to it. It is a matter of making small changes that have a large cumulative impact. By simply unplugging what I’m not using, turning off unnecessary lights, and using mass transportation when I’m at home in New York City, I can help reduce some of the burden that is being put on our planet.
After what we learned about in this class concerning advertising, I felt a little used by the system. The manipulative nature of the business is nothing new, but find out how impressionable we truly are is somewhat concerning. I hope that by knowing myself, who I really am, and knowing what I need and want, I will be able to avoid the consumerism that engulfs this country. Maybe the solution to our problems is just that simple: knowing who we really are, what we really want, and how to find the balance between what we need and want. But simple as these words may sound, it will take a lifetime to actually get an answer to these questions. That is how I shall live: I shall live striving to know myself and to use that knowledge to help others.
