My Interactive Reflection Journal

My blog comprises mainly of responses from my current English class.  They range form creative stories, quick responses, and stories using the weekly vocabulary words.

IRJ #22: “Livin’ in a Material World…”

“Livin’ in a Material World…”

In The Odysessy, the author describes a banquet with, “A maid brought water soon in a graceful golden pitcher and over a silver basin/A staid housekeeper brought on bread to serve them, appetizers aplenty too, lavish with their bounty/ A carver lifted platters of meat twoards them…and set beside them golden cups…” (Homer 82).  This obviously describes and reveals the wealth of the ocassion and the people who have the priviledge of being served with these things.  This got me thinking about wealth, society, and power, and how most humans crave it– how society today obsesses over material items, how a woman wants those gorgeous two-thousand dollar shoes, or how a man longs over a sports car.

When asked why they want that material item, they could say because of it’s quality, or because they saw the latest celebrity wearing it.  But in my opinion, we humans crave material things because we like the sense of entitlement it gives us.  We love the power and respect we feel when we own that expensive thing, the feeling that we have that we are better than anyone else, just because we own that.  It’s a symbol of power and money, a symbol that one has enough money to go out and buy that certain thing. 

For example, there may be an item at Walmart that one could get for twenty dollars, and an item that one could get for two-hundred at a more high-end store.  Some people would choose the more expensive one.  Why?  Because that person loves the feeling she gets when she tells a friend that she got it at this high-end store for two-hundred dollars– the feeling that she got the best and therefore happents to be the best.  She would not get the same feeling if she had told her friend that she purchased it at Walmart, a common-folk store.   If, in The Odysessy, the people dined at a McDonalds, eating hamburgers and drinking out of plastic cups, they would not feel as special or as important.  They need those material things to make themselves feel better and to make themselves look better; they would be insecure without it. 

The world and today’s society loves wealth and power.  We love the feeling of importance and security it gives us when we do possess it. 

And sometimes, wealth and power seem like the only ways to get something.

IRJ #21: Bad Gets Good, Good Gets Bad

Bad Gets Good, Good Gets Bad

Turning the anorexic thin pages in my Bible to the Genesis section and starting on the daily English assignment, I read the story about Jacob and Esau, and how Jacob tricked Isaac into giving him his wonderful blessings instead of giving them to Esau.  Isaac tells Esau, who had gotten tricked, “Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing” (Gen. 27.35). Isaac cannot give Esau any blessings, since he gave them to brother Jacob.  Esau deserved those blessings, but did not get them.

In the world, the most innocent of people do not get what they deserve.  Instead, the rewards that they should have received turn out to be given to the deceitful.  When asked, “Why didn’t I get it? Why did he have to? It’s not fair”, a usual response would be, “Life’s not fair”.  Yes, that’s true: Life’s not fair, but why?  Why do incredibly bad things happen to amazing people?   Why does someone who has never committed a crime, has never done anything wrong, get punished?  People who indeed do unforgivable things should be the ones to be punished, not the ones who turn out to be visibly innocent.  Why do people who work so hard to accomplish what they want, end up not getting it?  Instead, other people get it without even trying.  Without putting half of the effort that the other person did, they just achieved it.

So it’s true.  Life’s not fair, and it never will be.  But I guess the real questions lies in one word: why?

If someone gets the answer, find me, yeah?

IRJ #20: Can You Read This? What about this, “Lfjawe Liet20fj Lshan2a”?

Can You Read This? What about this, “Lfjawe Liet20fj Lshan2a”?

My math teacher had given us homework that involved reading a New York Times article about numbers and in general, math.  I skimmed over the article, seeing if there was anything important I needed to remember for the assignment.  I came across this quote that really struck me, “..Numbers start to seem a bit mysterious.  They apparently exist in some sort of Platonic realm, a level above reality”.  This got me thinking about numbers and math.  We really don’t know that numbers exist.  Sure, at an early age, our parents taught us to count and how to add and subtract, but did we ever really learn why we use that number? Or how numbers even exist? Given to us are rules that we must follow.  People just expect us to follow these rules: 1+1=2 and 9-2=7.  No question about it.  That’s just how the world goes ’round…

Has there been anyone who throws down that purple crayon, stands up, and demands to know why a big oval equals the value of a “zero”?  Why can’t a star equal zero? Why a horizontal line (-) and a horizontal and vertical line together (+) can make the biggest of differences and change everything? Probably not.

In life, we are given rules that we inevitably follow.  No one questions these rules.  No one asks, “But Mr. Teacher, why?”.  We don’t make up our own numbers and own rules.  They are given to us.  None of us will really know if the math we’re doing happens to be correct, if when we say “correct” turns out to be really correct.  If that fancy new formula in Physics really makes any sense at all–they happen to be just a bunch of letters with symbols thrown in here and there, what makes that the right way to do it? People just assume they contain correctness and follow them. A rule “equals” that we must follow it, it seems.

But…Mr. Teacher, why do we follow them?

IRJ Reflection: #19

“L” is For The Way You Look, At Me…

In the novel, Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks, the lead character John has separated from the love of his life, Savannah, because of the fact that he went off to fight in the war.  While in the war, Savannah fell in love with another man who has cancer and in need of money.  John donates the money in either to make Savannah happy .  John says about the situation, “Love meant that you care for another person’s happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be” (Sparks 275).

John happens to probably be one of the few people who know what the word “love” really means.

Okay, so I know I’m only a teenage girl who’s only experience with “love” includes faces from posters in Teen Bop Magazine, and I’ll admit I don’t know what love happens to be either.  However, I happen to be pretty cynical about this so-called “true love”, mainly due to the fact that we don’t take love seriously anymore.  We all say that we “love” something–that new skirt, the delicious hamburger eaten last night, or a favorite book. Look up “love” in the dictionary.  The Oxford American Dictionary defines love as “an intense feeling of deep affection”.  So, that person had an “intense feeling of deep affection” for that hamburger?  If we keep tossing the word “love” around like it’s nothing, it will lose the truly special meaning that it has.

How can we find that one person that we would be willing to give up absolutely everything for, as John had put it? The one person that holds the importance in our lives?  I happen to know that many people would put their own happiness before their love’s, probably due to the fact that we all happen to be incredibly selfish. The rate of divorces in the world has sky rocketed more than ever before, due to money and other problems.  Isn’t “true love” supposed to last through in sickness, health, in good times and in bad?  Well, that’s what “in love” couples state when they arrive at the altar.

Does true love really exist? Did true love ever exist (apart from cheesy romantic novels and Shakespearean plays)?

IRJ Reflection: #18

The Green Eyed Monster Causes Problems

Cain murders his own brother due to the fact that God had chosen Abels offering instead of his.  Genesis describes, “And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.” (Gen. 4.8)

Cain, obviously jealous that God accepted Abel’s offering, decides to go and kill him out of spite.  In society, we often gain jealousy when seeing other people succeed or seeing other people gain something that we ourselves want.  Jealousy takes over our lives, we plot and do unreasonable or inappropriate things.

Wanting to succeed, striving to be the best, and doing well in life happen to be human nature.  However, when we  see someone else get what we want, we end up letting jealousy take the better of us and therefore making rash actions.  Although, I have never, say, killed my own brother because of jealousy, there have been many situations where seeing someone else get what I want made my face turn green.

Not only does this quote deal with jealousy, but it also deals with the aspect of acceptance; we go great lengths to be accepted, to just feel like we have accomplished something.  Acceptance also has to deal with our self-esteem and self-worth; acceptance gives us a feeling of worth.

Every person in the whole entire world wants to be accepted.  They want crave that feeling that what they did turned out to be good enough, and who they happen to be as a person turns out to be good enough for other people; they want to be liked, accepted, and well thought of.  Many movies focus on plots that contain someone going to extreme means to be accepted, whether by the secret gang or even the “popular” clique in school.

IRJ-QR#17: Lyra: The Little Kid Inside

Lyra: The Little Kid Inside

Lyra encounters Lee Scoresby, an aeronaut, and says this upon the meeting: “The aeronaut!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where’s your balloon?  Can I go up in it?’”  (Pullman 193).
In The Golden Compass, Lyra continuously contains a longing of wanting to grow up, be mature, and start acting like an adult.  Easily fascinated by ‘grown up’ talk, Lyra wishes to act wise and sophisticated like the many adults that constantly surround her.  Even with this hope, Lyra still constantly acts like any other child would in a situation.  In the quote listed above, Lyra immediately wants to go into the balloon, explore, and have fun like she should.  This reveals that although Lyra tends to act mature and responsible, she is still a kid at heart.
Lyra, the daughter of Mrs. Coutler and the great Lord Asriel, who has been described as having an unbelievable destiny that she must fulfill.  There is irony in that because Lyra is clueless to how much power and potential she has, when she babbles on about balloons and unconciously wanting to do what other kids do all the time.  Even though Lyra has a lot of destiny and power and is the offspring of two very important people, that does not mean that she has to get rid of the whole process of her childhood.

Proposition:  No matter how much people want to grow up or how high their level of maturity is, there will always be that ‘kid’ inside of them that always wants to jump out.