Presentation that anyways is what I have learned

Nathaniel Ellis

November 19, 2013

Mythologies

Paper/presentation

That anyways is what I have learned

I will now ramble upon several topics that overall and have become important to me.

Hardship and pain, experiences and personal change.

What I have experienced

Hardship Beauty

What I am experiencing

Hardship Beauty

What I will experience

Hardship Beauty

I feel very mixed on what should have more impact on my life I have decided that both trial and its opposite both have great impact upon me. Conflict, strife, stress, pain, obstacle, challenge, sickness and loss, sit side by side within my life with with the counterparts, success, love, joy, calm, ease, health and gain.

As anyone progresses through their life I fell that they are continually recreating them selves as they experience living, I truly believe the expression “no man can step in the same river twice”. Because not only has the river moved on and has changed so the man has also changed. This change is the recreating of the persons character.

As I progress through life I am continually experiencing new things and I am changing continually into a new person. I am not the man I was a year ago or a year before that, also I am sure that next year I will to be different from who I am now, I progress as time goes on.

My life is limited, I live in the here and now, yet I feel that I am opened to so many experiences and that I can add their collected influence to my life. These can take many forms from mythology and exploits of heroes, to a chat with my grandmother about WW2 bombings on London. These events are a chance for me to expand my horizons and just like a story told can pass a night in a blink of an eye yet tell the lifetime of a man, they allow me to exchange a small part of my lifetime for another experience.

These experiences can take many forms from travel to far off exit places, to the visit of an art gallery, my life is filled with chances to experience new things. Wonder-full experiences such as novels, classes, conversations with mentors, hikes into the mountains, and morning routines abound in my life.

I think that experience in your life, good, bad, and ugly, act as a catalyst for change, change in character, soul and personality. Even the hard ships, especially the hardships. This experience can happen to you or can happen to another so long as the experience influences you. (The other may or may not be real as in mythology, but real is subjective, belief is very powerful). The retelling of the bombings of London have certainly changed me, I have and hopefully never will actually be woken in the night by air raid sirens and rush to the bomb shelters, but listening to this experience has in some way allowed it to change some part of me.

Now I will return to hardship, pain, and strife and why I think they are important. They are the moments where character is tested and broken. hardship add the color to life and even so they are certainly often not enjoyable. Yet while I would certainly never wish to relive certain events from my past I would not wish give up those experiences, their impact has allowed me to become who I am today.

I believe that as you and I go through life your experiences can either change you or you can decide to control your change. You can be acted upon or you can act upon yourself. I feel that change is unavoidable everywhere you look you can see examples of transformation, in nature and evolution, economics, love, as time passes the so called progress is made, but where is it going? I don’t' think anyone can truly live and yet stay the same to live is to change. Call it entropy or approaching room temp, call it static, call it perfection, I feel it is death, when their can be no change no improvement. I feel that living is changing, as I experience my life I am changing hopefully for the better.

I came to realize some time ago with great frustration that my life will not reach so called “perfection” and I also now realize that that is the way it is supposed to be. “Perfection” the idea that nothing can be added or taken away is something that I cannot achieve. The Lord God knows I have tried and fallen short. My life and my actions have not reached what I had envisioned so long before as perfection. I am continually trying to improve myself and will continue to do so until my death. I continually go through hardship yet now realize that there is great value in theses experiences as they have allowed me to decide who I want to be. Experiences present or allow for an opportunity for a change in my life.

The Idea that hard ship is the color of someones life now really means something to me. Life’s hardships trials, conflict, obstacles, sickness and loss, act in my life. Living is going through hardship and coming out the other side different then you entered. Hardship has become just as important to me as some of my most joyful experiences such as, (but certainly not limited to) creating and viewing art, chatting with friends and family, and experiencing a story.

Pain and hardship are not joyous experiences. I have stress, I have friends who are gravely ill, I have experienced the loss of loved ones, and these are the hardest things I have ever experienced but I realize they they are an opportunity for me to grow in character and to grow as a person. It is pain full but these current experiences allow me to improve myself. I can let stress change me into a nervous wreck or I can control my emotions. I could become bitter, cold, and harder from these hardships acting upon me or I can choose to become caring and supportive, I have become a bit of both I am a harder person but I have also learned to become more caring. I can feel like life is harsh and uncaring or I can decide to value each day as a treasure full of new experiences.

Living is becoming a new person the person you want to be or the person that is decided by your happenstances your experiences. As I said before you can be acted upon by your experiences or your experiences can allow you to act upon yourself. I now realize that I could have taken many other paths as I walked along the path that has lead me to this moment. My life could have been very different But I have chosen for (better or worse) at several points of my life to become the person I am today. I have been acted upon by some of my experiences but I have also acted upon myself. I have come to the realization that my character is largely up to me to decide I can either be acted upon by out side forces, my experiences, or I can choose my own fate as I live my life and experience each day.

That anyways is what I have learned.