Mistakes

We know everyone is not perfect and I am definitely not. There are many things that we don’t like about ourselves and that don’t make us proud. One of those things for me is the lacking of confidence. I don’t mean confidence in myself but the confidence to stand up for myself. I believe I am a very confident person when it comes to self-esteem but no so much in saying “no” to people or standing up for something I want. My personality is to make everyone else happy and completely ignore how I feel. For example, if I really wanted to do something in a routine for cheer and the coaches switch me to do something else were another person gets to do what I wanted to, I just say “okay” and if they ask me if that okay instead of being truthful and saying how I really feel, I just go along with it. A lot of the time I always say it is easier to just keep your mouth shut and let it go. That is one thing I really don’t like about my character but other may. I always put others before myself when it may make me unhappy. Another on of my flaws is hiding behind a smiling mask. I love to be a happy person and make other people happy even though it doesn’t always make me happy. Although some days when I am struggling to stay afloat and people try to help me I just push them away. This is because I don’t let people into my life. I do not like to tell people what is going on in my life and this maybe because I don’t trust people that easily. I try not to focus on myself all that much but when all my feelings get built up inside of me I eventually EXPLODE! This ties in with my first flaw about standing up for myself and being confident. Making others happy and putting them before yourself is good as long as you don’t forget that you and your happiness still matter.

When growing up you are leaning what is right and what is wrong. Well I will never forget the time I learned shoplifting was bad. I was about 5 years old when my mom took me to the dollar store one day. I saw these sparkly little marbles in mesh bags. I notices that some had fallen out so I took 2 of them and put them in my pocket. once we got home my mom noticed I had them. She asked where I got them from and being a 5 year old I told her where exactly I got them. She took me back to the dollar store and made me go up to the cashier and return them and apologize. I thought I was going to jail.

Being a teenager in high school sounds like trouble, and it is, just ask my parents. Well we all have our share of mistakes, regrets, and “YOLO” decisions. I also have a few that I am going to share. I remember way back in the summer before freshmen year, I snuck out on my bike to go meet this boy I liked at the park. I wasn’t allowed to date till I was 16 so to make me feel better about lying we just didn’t call each other “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”. So when we met at the park I got my first kiss, but then my parents found out cause I felt guilty and they took my bike away. I felt so bad for lying to my parents and for going behind their backs.

Another time I fell short of what was expected was when I was at a sleepover. My friend and I were invited to go watch a movie at another friends house. So I asked my parents and they were okay with that as long as I didn’t break my driving curfew, which is midnight. We started watching “Clueless” a silly chick flick. I wasn’t paying attention to the time and the movie ended at 12:15. So me and my fiend I was staying with were about to left leave to go back to her house when my mom called me. I answered the phone and she asked where I was. I lied. I said I was at my friends where we were about to drive to and she questioned me and told me they drove by their house and I wasn’t there. Then we drove to her house and went to bed and the next day I was grounded and couldn’t go out with my friends.

Childhood

When I was a kid I remember one book that always made me laugh. That book was “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. It was my favorite book because it had many vibrant colors and holes in the pages. At the very end the big fat caterpillar turns in to a beautiful butterfly with many bright colors on its wings! Although, my mom had to be very careful reading it to me at night because then I would get hungry myself. Many times we found our self’s in the kitchen late at night eating butter on bread. I remember those nights very vividly like it was only yesterday when my mom would tuck me into bed, read me a story, and pray with me. I never wanted my mom to leave my room. She would lay with me until I fell asleep, but I would try to stay up as late as I could so every time she asked if I were asleep I would respond with a sleepy voice “no momma I’m still awake”. Other times she would just tell me that she would sing one song to me so I picked the very repetitive “This is the song that never ends” so she would stay longer and longer. I never wanted her to leave me. Other nights when my dad would tuck me in he would read me many many different books and made up a silly voice for the different characters. My dad would make the books and characters come to life jumping off the pages. He always entertained me late at night when my mom be urging us both to go to bed. Some nights he put on a puppet show with his hands. Their names were Mr. Hands and Mrs. Hands; a pretty simple name for a 6 year old to come up with. They told stories, acted silly, and kept me smiling until it was really time to go to bed. Bedtime is never fun, but with what my parents did made it everything but boring and it started all with the simple children stories they read to me.

Happiness

This essay by John Ciardi was very interesting to read. It talked about what happiness is and how people try to gain happiness. There are many advertisements nowadays and they persuade us to buy the latest thing to enhance our lives; something that will make us “happier”. He tells us that people try to gain happiness though purchasing things that we really do not need. For Example in magazines, they have all have the makeup and hair products with huge pictures of beautiful women, stating that their products will make you more beautiful and look younger. So do those things really make us happy? Ciardi reminds us that happiness is not bought with money or by your possessions. In fact, we are taught by society that to be happy is to posses, which is not the case. He gives an example of a man who sits with nothing, doing nothing, and eating only when food is available. He asks us if this man is happy. The man is happy, he finds joy and contentment in thinking, and in being in his own head, as well as by not wanting things from outside but things from within himself. Each person has a different perception of happiness; one thing could make one person happy but not everyone.

In life there are always the mountains and the valleys, but it is the effort you put in to whether you can make the best out of your situations. Personally I think, that is the only thing you can do to get though the low times. It is to be happy, and not the kind of happy that involves buying things but how you posses it. The only way you can really be happy is going though the rough times and sticking it out because without the bumpy parts we do not see how the high parts in life are really all that great. Just take a minute to imagine if everything was always perfectly peachy. How would we really know what happiness is? Everything would all be the same, what would be the distinction? I see it as while you are on the mountain tops you look down on how far you have come and compare the two, and that is where true happiness comes from.

I do agree with Ciardi, although it was a little hard to understand at points, he still has good points. I understood what he was overall talking about. He gave two very different examples and I really enjoyed the man who found happiness by doing what seemed like absolutely nothing. I had never really thought about the actual question of “what is happiness” until now, and it was very interesting to see how such a seemingly simple word could be thought of in so many different ways.

Overall I think that I could apply this to my life by not focusing on all the bad things that may happen and remember that it is the challenges and difficulties in life that really define what happiness is. Knowing and remembering that the deep low valleys make the high beautiful mountain tops even better will help me be so much more appreciative of those low parts that may seem like there is no way out. It is our “Pursuit of Happiness”.