Before 2015 a past too abhorrent and a future too intangible cloaked my mind in a way I was rendered unable to pull outside of. Add the intractable disease I was both genetically and environmentally doomed for ─ depression ─ and I was an oh-so joyful culmination of veritable discrepancies. People knew me adverse of how I knew myself: In the midst of my academic accomplishments, I alone recognized my exasperating position in second place. I alone recognized too many nights spent pleasure reading or gaming when I should have been doing homework, and I alone understood what I managed to pass off as good leadership was really blind instinct.
It took a lifetime of strife before I could realize the only honesty either of these perspectives contain is the
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In short, Ayn Rand taught me how to move forward.
Since I have read Atlas Shrugged, I have been through a lifetime more of conflict. Yet unlike before, I didn’t shatter. It wasn’t easy, by any means. Five years after I finished the book, I still wrestled with the same predicament. Recovery and relapse, an infinite times over, is maybe all my life is going to be. But all the places I have reached in the midst of life 's endless cycle ─ self-actualization, discovery, release ─ make everything I have had to go through to get here undoubtedly worth it.
Maybe I had to lose every identity I was ever branded with before I could take the driver’s seat in my own life. Maybe I had to self-harm to realize that I, a speck of dust in a cosmic galaxy, am significant. Maybe I have to endure over two-hundred more days of barely bearable high school before I realize something about myself I can’t even begin to fathom. It is impossible to know what makes what happen and what leads to what. It is enough to know that, day by day, I am building the strength it takes to stand by who I am instead of digging a hole for myself in the shadows. I don’t make the decision to go back any longer; forward is the only movement I allow myself
Ayn Rand depicts characters that make important choices; her characters select from alternatives available to them — significant and sometimes life-and-death issues. Equality 7-2521 is the most obvious example, but not the only character in the book to make such choices. He chooses to wonder about the Unspeakable Word when he could (and, according to this society, should) decide not to. He chooses to conceal both the existence of the tunnel and his experiments, refusing to bow to the Councils ' will. He chooses not to tell his captors where he has been though they torture him.
“We need to realize that our path to transformation is through our mistakes. We 're meant to make mistakes, recognize them, and move on to become unlimited” (Yehuda Berg). As the quote suggests, transformation occurs through mistakes. Even if one seems irrecoverable, there is always a flicker of hope. The novel Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen chronicles the journey of a “lost cause” into a rekindled and hopeful teenager.
In order to counteract this sociological phenomenon, the late Ayn Rand’s Anthem should be required reading for all high school students. Although I have several intellectual qualms with the book’s author, its core message is incredibly powerful: even in the midst of oppressive powers, individualism is the most important aspect of the self. The main character discovers in his brief adventure that his ultimate purpose in life can only be created by himself, not by anyone else. He learns that it is more important to be a freethinking individual with a unique personality than to become one of the many impressionable robots of which his society is
People have three stages in their journey to individuality, and that is discovery, realization, and purpose. Ayn Rand’s goal is to warn readers about sacrificing oneself to others, and she yearns for others to go on a journey of self-discovery. Anthem is a message that warns others never
The next day a dull ache pulsated from the sun and a decision was made that changed my life. It is an enormous pleasure to expunge the weight of a destiny designed by expectation. My life was a stencil I was required to trace. For years I waded through facades of freedom mimicking suggested ideals and working hard to never fail at the prophecies placed upon me. My mind was simplified by barriers constructed by everyone I tried to please; as much as life felt dull and unfulfilling I lacked ability to doubt its integrity.
The book, A Dog’s Purpose, follows a dog who searches for his unique purpose in life. The canine experiences reincarnation four times, and in every one of his different lives, he tries to accomplish making his human happy. In his first life, he is Toby and lives in the Yard with a woman called Señora. Toby adjusts to his life in the Yard and assumes his purpose is to make Señora smile. He comforts her and takes pride in being her favorite.
The best way to deal adversity is to move forward from it and don’t look back at. Some would love to forget about their past but eventually it catches up. Like a famous actor, producer, director, screenwriter, playwright, author, and songwriter. Tyler perry, dealt with abuse both physically and sexually, but learned how to overcome it. He believed that “Writing it out” helped him cope with his adversity.
It was almost as if I led a double-life; one where everything was perfect and the other where everything seemed pointless and futile. There were times when I thought that I would be better of leaving and never coming back, just like that character in The Outsiders. However, every argument almost ended the same way;
She thought on the fact that your interest is yours is not relevant to their importance relative to the importance of the interest of others. So, it is a mistake to treat your own interests as if they are more important than the interest of others. Personally, I agree with Ayn Rand’s view supporting ethical egoism. I’ve realized that I only do whatever I choose to do for my own self benefit and self-interest.
My childhood was lost because of this, but since coming out a new world has opened. When I started my freshman year of high school I was quiet, extremely introverted, depressed, and always anxious. I didn’t how to make friends, I had no friends, and I was at a new school. My world was turned upside down, but for the first time in my life, I could be who I wanted to be, which was myself. I didn’t want to trapped inside myself anymore and didn’t want to be afraid of what the world could do to me.
Life is not solely about being in the moment, it is about accepting your past, moving on and looking towards the future when the world is turning the wrong way for your life. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, represents moving on away from the past without entirely blocking it out, but instead living it up. What are the consequences of dwelling in the past? Is it a difficultly reaching the future? Or is it merely just being held back from living your life to the fullest?
Ayn Rand’s Anthem gives an interesting take on what a society without a sense of individualism would look like. The main character of this book, Equality 7-2521, struggles with his life when he wants to take off on his own path and express his personal ideas, however everyone else meets these ideas with anger and skepticism. Everyone has been persuaded to believe that everybody is equal and no one has the right to have individualised thoughts. Equality 7-2521’s thirst for knowledge helps him break out of these chains. His desire to learn leads him to branch out and explore new things, helping him form new individualised thoughts.
We can see their eyes, green and yellow as coals, watching us from the tree branches beyond” (84). When he was living under the protection of the City, he was unaware of how to perform these tasks. However, once he left, he had to employ cognition to determine what he should do and how he should go about doing it. This was important to his survival, as Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism states. The desire for individuals not to sacrifice themselves for others is present in
Sometimes the most unforeseen places of pain and despair can rebuild you into a person of firmness and courage. A gateway where you believed you can be safe to let go and breakdown, and release all the stress that you've been building in, in order to come to realization that you must remain potent. For me, that hideaway would be the unusual corner of my slide-open closet. As I reminisce, I recall sitting down on the shaggy brown carpet floor, in a tight squared corner between the laundry hampers and unlaced shoes scattered about the closet floor. With hot tears racing continuously down my face, and the constant echoing inside my head of the ill-mannered children taunting me just for being different, just for being me.
I spend a significant amount of time just thinking about myself as I go throughout my day. I constantly question myself: why am I the way that I am, what could I have done better here, what is my place in the world, etc. In the context of this paper, I have come to a conclusion. In the past, I was a leader. Now, I realized I have failed.