Mission Accomplished

To the 2 people that probably read this blog, this post connects back to my "A Mug in Ceramics Class" post.

Imagine being in your mid 30's. You've had the last 30 something years to build a life. You've grown closer with your family, you've made new friends with hat used to be complete strangers. You have pretty much completely built your while life, and you expect it to just stay like that until you die.

That wasn't the case for my parents.

My parents dropped absolutely everything they had when they were in their mid 30's. All their friends, their families, coworkers, everything, just gone. Why did they do this? Just so that my brother and I could have a good education. We moved around all of these countries that I've talked about before on this blog so that my brother and I could receive the education they thought we deserved.

Colombia was not a place my parents thought my brother and I could succeed. They had lived their while life there, and they wanted us to do much better than they did.

So, in pursuit of an education, the final goal seemed to be that my brother and I get into a good college. There's farther goals after that, like a Masters degree for me and a PhD for my brother.

2 years ago when my brother got admitted into the University of California, Davis to study genetics, the first half of the final goal was reached.

After this, I was the only one left that needed to complete this goal. There was and extreme amount of pressure on me. I couldn't disappoint my parents. They literary dropped EVERYTHING for me. My mom has suffered since the day we left Colombia just so that I could have a good life. I feel a need to please her by being successful.

On November 13, 2015, the goal was reached.

I was offered admission into the communications program at Michigan State University.

When I found this out, I simply screamed. I let out the biggest scream in my entire life. I didn't know what else to do, so I just kept screaming of joy.

A lot of people are thinking, why is this kid so happy, it's just one college. But it's not just one college, it is what my parents gave their lives to. My friends have been admitted to college, and they've been happy but nobody understands the joy that I felt when I opened that page saying I was admitted.

It was honestly one of the best days of my lives, because as I talk to my cousins that are my age living in Colombia, they're sitting there dreaming they had my life. They dream that they lived in the United States and received the education that is offered here. I have this opportunity, and I just expanded it even more.

So, the goal has been reached.My parents dropped their lives for this. And my brother and I have finally finished it off.

Mission accomplished.

Now I think...my parents can go back to Colombia. Soon I'm turning 18, I'll be an adult. They can go back and finish their lives off. They'll never be able to gain back the years that my brother and I took away from them, but I would be completely okay with it if they felt the need to go back and live the lives they initially planned on living.

I love my parents more than anything, and I am forever in debt with them on giving me this opportunity that not many people get. So, thank you to you two.

Choices

For someones existence to be essence it would require that an action define someone. This existential idea says that every human alive starts out by just simply being something that exists, nothing else but that, but that can be change by our actions, and that our actions make us who we are.

Mersault is an example of someone that just simply is a human that "exists" He simply follows everything that surrounds his life, and doesn't take any big steps. He works his regular job, and when his mom dies, he just simply does what one does when mourning. He doesn't express a huge amount of emotion or feeling, and most of the time it seems as if he isn't able to feel.

There is one instance in which he finally begin to feel, and becomes a person. That moment is when he shoots the Arab. He finally makes a decision, and that decision is to shoot that person, and not just once, but four times, which exemplifies the idea that it was his choice. With this choice, he gave his existence essence.

Walt Whitman Poetry

"I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,"

Whitman uses these first three lines to show us his view on society and how he thinks it is or it should be. He gives a lot of comparisons that to us seem like normal things. Old, young. Foolish, wise. Maternal, paternal. Why does he use these different comparisons? He uses them to show us that through all the diversity that there is in the world and through every single thing that are polar opposites, there are things in common. He tries to tell us that we should be united and look at things as all being one.

 He also uses the word "I" to begin the poem, so he identifies himself as someone that isn't just sided towards one thing. He wants to be able to identify himself with everyone. He wants to reach out to everyone that is out there. He specially focuses himself of the people in the United States later in the poem. He wants to identify himself with the whole nation because of how he feels toward it.

A Mug in Ceramics class

The prompt says to discuss a significant event that's had a profound impact on the identity I have today, but unfortunately I can't sit down and write about just one single event, because the way that I have lived and the reason I am who I am today cannot be traced back to one event, sorry Mrs. Cabrera.

There isn't just one event that has made me who I am, there's a series of events for this. These series of events do follow a specific event- moving.

To many who will read this, "moving" is simply moving houses down the block or even as far as across town, but it's been different for me. For me, "moving" has been across oceans and across thousands of miles, not just a block or two.

I believe that my identity and who I am as a person and as a student is further exemplified by the identity of those that surround me. Manhattan Beach, California. Those three words are read and similar thoughts go through people's mind; “snobby”, “ungrateful”, “spoiled”. These stereotypes that are put into the community I have been raised in the last eight years is what makes me different. My identity is not the same as my communities. I was not born into a world where I immediately received everything I wanted. I was born into a dark and difficult world, otherwise known as Colombia. The first six years of my life I lived in a third world country. I did not just live in this country, I embraced it, I was proud of it, and I took everything it gave me and guided my future with it. There is a gap in between living the first six years of my life in Colombia and being raised in California since the fourth grade, where was I in that gap? I was in the pursuit of my education. My parents were in pursuit of removing me from a world full of war, poverty and corruption. Colombia was no longer an option in which I could expand every single idea and every single desire that came into my growing and curious mind. So where was I? I was in Brazil. I was in Saudi Arabia. These are not just vacation spots I visited, these are the countries I was raised in. My background has not been shaped by any single factor, but rather every different continent’s soil has made me who I am. I have seen things that I am more than certain no one else in my community or in any community remotely near me has seen.

São Paulo, Brazil. 2,683 miles away from home. This is the first attempt to pursue my education. Never before had I heard about the language Portuguese. The teachers didn’t care about that, my parents didn’t care about that, no one cared about that. I was immediately thrown into this new and disparate culture and was expected to learn it and adapt to it quickly. I took on the challenge, not only because I had no other choice, but because I was raised to bravely take on any challenge thrown at me. I watched TV in Portuguese, I read books, I listened and imitated those around me and within a couple months I conquered the challenge. This was only the first of many challenges to stand in my path to success. After this came the challenge of actually living in this new culture. My friends, my language, my culture, my family and my life were taken away from me; I had to start from scratch. There's no lonelier feeling than how I felt then, and that is part of what shaped my identity. I realized that feeling lonely and sad wasn't going to take me anywhere, so why not make the best of everything. I made friends and I made family in this country who changed who I am and who helped me see new things that I am still able to see and that I will continue to see in the future as I pursue my career.

Then it all happened again.

2,428 miles away from home.

Dallas, Texas, United States of America.

Throughout the years I’ve asked my parents why we moved so much. The answer they give me is that it was all meant to pursue a place where I could receive a quality education, because they wanted to give my brother and I the best chance there is to succeed. What better way to that than to go to America, the land of the dreams. It’s true, there almost is no better place in this world where you can receive a good education. It maybe be expensive, it may be bad at times, but it’s almost the best there is. Living in the United States was just another culture shock for me.  Similarity between São Paulo and Texas? The heat. Absolutely nothing else. Here is a seven year old who is fluent in two languages living in America. This achievement on its own should be something amazing and useful, but it wasn’t. I felt completely useless and lost because I could not communicate with anyone outside of my family. I didn’t understand anything going on around me, so once again I had to begin to learn something new. I was put in school speaking a maximum of about 2 sentences in English, and was expected to not have it affect me and to begin being normal. At some point a kid in my position begins to lose comfort. I had to make new friends again, I had to learn a brand new language. That changed me so much because of the way that Americans looked at me. They didn’t care that I was struggling with anything, all they saw me as was another Latino immigrant. This began a new carving into my identity, because from this point on I would no longer be shy, I would not longer mind dropping my life and taking it somewhere else. I became a new person.

7,979 miles away from home this time.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

I lived in the Middle East for ten months. What Americans see on TV on CNN, I saw with my own eyes as a seven-year old. Burnt down buildings, military tanks guarding every important building, violence, revolt, but most importantly, I saw culture. I spent time with the Prince’s son, I saw thousands of people pray five times a day to a God that most Americans find spiteful. I myself prayed to my God on Christmas Eve with the ambassador of Spain; the only difference was that our Christmas prayer had to be under closed doors and tight security, for any prayer that went against the Muslim God, Allah, was strictly and strongly punishable by law. Not a single thing surrounding me for those ten months did I consider “home”. Seemingly endless deserts to my right, enormous and alluring Mosques to my left. Once again I was abruptly forced into another culture. This wasn't just a country that was across a border, this was across the entire Atlantic Ocean. I'll never be able to forget what I saw there. The relationship between Dallas and Riyadh is absolutely non-existent. I had to learn to behave in a new manner that went along with the society there. I became a new person, a person that still lives within me to this day. Crying every night became tiring, being scared of the outside world became tiring, so I took on this challenge the same way I had taken on the previous ones. I kicked the ass of everything that came at me. New food? Bring it on. New people? I don't care, give it to me. An absolutely unfamiliar and peculiar culture? Let's have it all. The way that I was able to adapt in those months gave me skills that I use to this day and will be able to use for the rest of my life. This was the third time in eight years that my child self felt completely lost, and that is something that I’ve traced back to taking an effect on my identity.

3,510 miles away. The final number.

Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

This is the final event in the series of events that had a profound impact on the identity that I have today. I’m back in the United States pursuing my education. The first day of school in LA I was a fourth grader and fluent in three different languages. This seems to be the city my future is destined to rise in. As I once again begin to fit in, everything feels easier and better. I’m no longer shy when making friends, I know things that no one else does, and I feel at place. This is something rare. I’m not used to feeling like I belong and feeling confident about whatever I do, so it’s the last step in shaping my identity. This last move to Hermosa Beach gave me the courage to become myself and the courage to be who I am today. Education wise, my parents chose the city with a High School in the top 1% in the nation; so that goal was achieved.  

If there is to be a metaphor for the shaping of my identity, I'd give it to the mug I am currently making in Ceramics class. I’ve built this bowl over and over again. Creating it and then smashing it multiple times because it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Somehow for me his relates to the way that my identity was shaped.

3 continents, 4 countries, 5 cities, and 23,832 miles of traveling later, I am here today. From the outside I am not who people think I am. My identity has been shaped and carved in such a way that I can barely begin to describe it, but this is who I am. I have changed significantly since the day I left Colombia, and my identity will continue to shape itself in the years to come.

0 miles away from home.

Colombia, what I first classified as my "home" when I was born, is evidently no longer home to me. These events I described have once again shown to shape who I am because due to them I've lost the meaning of home. I am now scared to call a place "home" because throughout my life, every time I would label where I lived that, it would change. Home to me is not the two lines below my name on my California driver's license. I don't consider this my home, because throughout my life it's been evident that one place isn't destined to be my final home. So why label this one? Why hurt myself more and break my heart like I did every time before this when it came to moving. I believe this isn't my final home, and maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. So for now, home is where I stand within myself, not where I reside.

Hiding everything

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not a truth." -Marcus Aurelius

The reason that everything we hear is an opinion rather than a fact is because of the way we want to hear it. Most of the time when we hear something we want it to hold the best outcome for us. As humans we have been raised to be selfish in the way that we hope everything works out for us, we want to be happy with ourselves. We also hear things as opinions because of the way people express things. The same category of selfishness falls on them because what they say has to have the best outcome for them, so it may not be a fact but rather an opinion that benefits them.

There's no reason why we would ever want to hurt ourselves. For that reason, we have the capability of filtering things to see them in the way that we WANT to see them rather than in the way we SHOULD be seeing them. That's why everything is a perspective, not a truth. The perspective we create of things is something that we make for ourselves, and most of the time that isn't the truth

Personal Reflection

Every person with a parent has been sat down by them and been given a deep, serious, and stern talk. As you read this you most likely have flashbacks to that one talk that still lingers in your mind and their words still affect you to this day. Being given those talks is simply how we all learned when we were young. There is one talk in particular my father gave me that I still think about. My father and I were in Paris, France when he gave me this talk. To be more specific, we were in the Trocadero- the open area filled with magnificent small staircases in front of the Eiffel Tower. He sat me down in those steps and said “Son, listen to me when I tell you this. You have a true gift.” But as a 9 year old I remember thinking to myself “wow, do I have superpowers? Can I controll fire?”. Unfortunately for my 9 year old self that wasn’t the case. He followed by telling me that I have the ability to change people, He told me that I affected people i such a positive way by just being who I was. According to him, I connected with every person I met in such a way that he had never seen before- take in the fact that this a 40 year old businessman who has an almost endless contact list on his phone. I took absolutely nothing from this talk 8 years ago, I’d gotten sat down by him countless times before, I thought it was just the same thing again. For the next 6 years that memory would continue to linger in my subconscious thoughts, but it wasn’t until I became a 15-year old that I understood what he meant. I’ve now myself noticed that I have this “gift”- so why not use it in my life? One of the things I hate the most is cockiness, so when I say this I don’t want to sound one bit cocky; but I’ve caught on to the way that I treat people and the way they react, and it is true what my father said. Don’t get me wrong, i’m not loved by everyone, there’s people out there that 100% hate my guts and would do anything to get rid of me, but that’s just a few out of many. I was given this for a reason, and I’m not going to waste that. I want the purpose of my life to be that I do something helpful, not just with myself, but with other people since I have the ability to interact so well with them. I want to be able to change the lives of others in the most astonishing and positive way possible.

Behind a desire to achieve something there has to be motivation to achieve it. What I want out of my life is to be able to look at both my parents dead in the eyes and say “your sacrifices were worth it- everything you did for me was worth it.” My mom and dad were in their mid-30’s when they dropped their lives. They packed our bags and took us out of Colombia. Everything they had built for 30 years- family, friends, jobs- gone. For the sole reason to give my brother and I a better life, a better education, a better opportunity.