Chase
Martinez
5/23/14
DeWit
It’s All On You
What is considered successful? What does
it take to be successful? Life is just one big search for success. Nobody wants
to be “considered” unsuccessful. Life is a game that we try to win every single
day. Sometimes we will lose and sometimes we will win. You can’t focus on the
past because you no longer have any control over it. You can’t focus on the
future because we don’t know what will happen. There is no telling what life
will throw at us. What matters is how we take those challenges and make it. We
all make mistakes but if we can move past those mistakes and turn it into
something positive then you can live a successful life. Life gives us many
opportunities to be successful but also to fail. Nobody is perfect and some of
our choices we make affect the way people look at us. These successes and
failures can haunt you for the rest of your life, but it’s on you to decide
what you do with them.
Sometimes we don’t think about things
before we do them. We don’t take the time to sit down and really go through
situations thinking about whether the decision about to be made is a good or a
bad one. Aaron Huey talks about land being stripped from Native Americans and
how in his eyes he thinks they were prisoners of war in a speech he gives about
his findings of the Lakota people. He talks about the struggles the Lakota
people have gone through, the force that was used to take away land from them,
and how their culture is still there after all this. He asks the audience a
question during the end of his speech and it was “Is any of this your
responsibility today?” (Aaron Huey, “America’s Native Prisoners of War”). The
decisions we make are our own responsibility. We may take opinions from other
people but in the end we ultimately make the decision and have to live with it.
Not only do we have to live with it but there are circumstances to our
decisions. We may hurt someone whether it is emotionally or physically, but by
thinking things through beforehand, we may be able to avoid such situations. We
all may not be prisoners of war like the Lakota people and millions of others
have before us, but we are prisoners of our own mind. Our mind is what makes
these decisions. We may have controversy to decide what is right from wrong but
we are fighting our mind. We may overthink things causing even more trouble
however, we are fighting our mind. As a child, you are slowly building your
mind expanding on everything around you and trying to find your soul purpose in
this world. When you get older, you are trying to fight all the information
you’ve gained that you’ve either by seen or heard throughout your life. We are
constantly fighting our mind and for some, it leads to grief.
With grief comes a point of forgiveness.
We do not control everything that happens around us. The decisions we make,
however, can lead to a better outcome. In the book Tattoos on the Heart by
Gregory Boyle, Boyle talks about multiple stories that he has witnessed of
people wanting to make a change in their life. One story involves a young boy
named Chico who made some bad decisions and it ended up leading him to the
hospital due to gunshot wounds where he would eventually die. Chico grieved
while on his death bed because he realized the pain and harm he has caused to
others because of his decisions. “How could it be possible that a
sixteen-year-old cholo, gunned down, not far from his home, be a terrific kid?”
(Boyle 212). In the end, we tend to summarize all the events or ideas that have
led to a certain outcome. We analyze these ideas and try to put it all together.
The fact that Chico realized what he has done is a sign of success. Something
finally clicked that made him want a second chance. Unfortunately we don’t
always get a second chance in life. The grief in our lives can either break you
or change you. It can make you focus on people and grieve for what they have
done in their past. However, it can also change you to be a better person.
Grief is not always a bad thing.
Sometimes when we grieve something in our mind connects. In The Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, A young boy named
Arnold finds a connection when he finally mourns from all the pain in his life
from things such as being bullied, to having his loved ones pass away. “I keep
writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and rethinking and revising and
reediting. It became my grieving ceremony.” (Alexie 178). In life, we really are just writing and
rewriting. We are writing our own personal life story. When we try to rewrite
it, we are trying to change what has already happened. We can’t always change
what has already happened. We can’t go back and make ourselves better looking
and even change our decisions completely. Arnold would write down what made him
happy and draw cartoons of what made him angry. He found an outlet of drawing
through his “grieving ceremony”. Our success story is full of grief. Nothing is
easy. If you want to be successful, you have to take these anguishes in your
life and turn it into something encouraging. Arnold found drawing as an
encouraging way to keep his success story going. A kid who lived on a
reservation where nobody ever left, he did the unexpected. He used the
hardships as fuel to make something of his life. He made his success story by
getting back up when life knocked him down. However, people can play a role in
your decision making.
The people that you surround yourself
with plays a huge role in how you live your life. If you surround yourself
around a group of people that are dedicated to earning their college degrees,
finding a successful job, treating people with respect, etc. chances are that
those kind of decisions will influence you positively and help give you that
extra push to do better. However, if you are surrounding yourself around guys
who are involved with gangs, violence, guns, and drugs, then that could leave
your life spiraling downhill. “If they really loved you, they’d tear this
@#*&^!@ up.” (Boots Riley, “The Underdog”). There is always time for a
change. You can always stop what you’re doing and try to change things to make
them better. There are circumstances that come with that. One circumstance is
that when you are in a gang, you must be loyal to the members of that gang.
When you join, some gangs don’t allow you to leave. The only way to leave is
death. In Tattoos on the Heart, there are multiple examples of that.
These gang members want to leave their lifestyle of violence and actually do
something with their life. Some successfully got out of their gangs and are
currently working on trying to fix their lives. Some paid the price and lost
their life trying to better themselves. “Well whad ya aspect. YA MOVED.”
(Boyle, 96). This scene talks about how this young kid was trying to draw a
picture of Boyle but he moved so the picture that the boy was drawing did not
turn out too well. He compares it to “Picasso on his worst day” (Boyle, 96).
The drawing represented life. Boyle made one slight move, one decision, and it
changed the entire outcome of the drawing. Even though the young boy kept
telling him to not move, Boyle moved. This young boy’s action affected Boyle
causing him to laugh which made the drawing different. All the errors in that
drawing represent the mistakes in our life. It can be something as big as
joining a gang or even breaking your mother’s favorite antique item. We are
affected by the people and things around us but we have the choice who we
surround ourselves with. It doesn’t start with anyone else it starts with you.
Sometime in our life, we may need that extra boost from someone other than ourselves.
Some people in life may not have that
drive or determination to help them reach their potential and success in their
life. They may need someone who has a positive attitude to help them accomplish
their goals in life. Not only may we need that extra push from someone but we
can also help them out as well. Having a positive mindset and actually
listening to someone’s problems to help them find a way to solve their problem.
With the struggles of life, we may not always have an answer to our own problems
but with constructive criticism from a secondary source, it may help not only
solve our problem but get us closer to finding a solution. We can’t be so
selfish when it comes to finding our own success. Throughout our entire life we
will encounter many different people whether it be a “hello” to someone walking
by or the building of a new friendship. Something as simple as saying hi to
someone can actually change someone’s day. “You looked happy. And I was happy
for you.” (Alexie, 229). You can boost your own morale knowing that you are
sending out a positive vibe to the people around you. Not everyone you deal
with may be as happy or excited about the day as you but the fact that you are
making an attempt to put happiness out to everyone and yourself can make every
day more enjoyable. That positivity you are sending out could possibly change
someone else’s day. They may have been dealing with the heartache of the loss
of a loved one. You should always treat people the way you want to be treated.
If you shove out a negative attitude, you better be ready to receive negative
attitudes from others. It’s all a recurring process. The fact of the matter is
that you should take the time to help others become successful while you are on
your journey of success because it will make your journey that much easier. For
success to happen, you also need an opportunity to be successful.
How can we gain success if we do not
have an opportunity? This is one challenge that America as a country is trying
to overcome presently. In life, people consider themselves to be successful by
how much money they have. You don’t have to have a lot of money to be
successful. As long as you are happy with what you are doing then consider that
your success. However, we do need money to buy things such as food, water, and
shelter which is essential to our survival. In The Rich and the Rest of Us by
Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, both the authors talk about how what was
considered as the “middle class” in America has now fallen into poverty. For us
to be able to make money, we must have a job. In order for us to get a job,
there has to be positions open where we can fill those spots. “While 60 percent
of the jobs lost during the economic downturn were in mid-wage occupations, 73
percent of the jobs added have been in lower wage occupations…” (West and
Smiley, 173). The loss of jobs is a hard challenge to all who are either poor
or are barely making a living. It does
not help that our country went through this Great Recession that we had no
control over. Unequaled corporate profiteering and greed, more than a decade of
foreign wars, and unregulated tax benefits for the wealthy are some examples of
the abjection that lead to the Great Recession. In life, we won’t always have
control over things. This is a major speed bump that not only us as individuals
have to get over, but the country as a whole has to deal with and somehow
surpass this challenge. Despite not having an opportunity, there’s no reason to
center our attention on what we can’t control. If we can move on then we will
better ourselves. It can be considered as are “essential to growth and
survival” (Smiley and West, 187). The best thing we can do as an individual and
a country is find a way to make a change. Change can lead to success and that
is what we are all seeking. Sooner or later an opportunity will come and we
have to be ready to take advantage of it.
Life is beautiful and we should cherish
every moment of it. The ups and downs in our life makes us wonder what tomorrow
has in store for us. The people who are successful already obviously did
something right. They set out on a journey that led them to where they are now.
Some of their journeys may have been easier than others but the decisions they
made is why they are successful. There is always time for a change. Success is
never easy. It is a long, gruesome adventure that requires you to be ready
because you may only get one opportunity to be successful. If being successful
was so easy, we would all be millionaires.
What
makes a good essay?
An essay in college has
three main things: an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. It must
have an intro leading up to a thesis which is the last sentence in the
introduction. It must have body paragraphs that start with a topic sentence.
After that it should have a buffer sentence then go right into their evidence.
It should have 1-3 pieces of evidence which include quotes, facts, data, etc.
Each piece should be analyzed for 1-4 sentences. At the end of the body
paragraphs it should have a transition sentence to give a taste of what the
next paragraph is going to talk about. Then it should have a conclusion that
stays away from repeating what you’ve already presented in the essay. It should
give the audience a “left upper cut” where it makes the point we are trying to
reach with the essay.
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