A reoccurring thought over these past two weeks....."My faith in humanity has been restored." What an absolutely incredible experience! This is mostly in part because of the final project in my adolescent development class. For our final project we were to take a deep look into our adolescence and apply what we had learned in class to construct an autobiography of our teen years and gain a better understanding of what has influenced us to develop into who we are today. At first I have to admit I was not at all thrilled by this assignment because it meant bringing up and remembering things that are somewhat difficult to think about. I became even more aware of this as I began writing.
Wow I began remembering events that I haven't thought of in a while, such as the mess of with having to testify in court and dealing with the drama between the parents during their divorce. Oh yes it was quite eventful. I also wrote a little bit about the battle I had with anorexia at age 14 and how that experience has made me into a stronger person and helped me realize how precious this life is! Well there were also other more positive things that constructed my autobiography however the written part was only part of the project. The other half was presenting what we had written about. I honestly don't mind doing presentations but the thought of having to present about some of my adolescent events made me a little apprehensive. Anyways finally I finished my autobiography (thank the heavenly stars). The presentations were spread over the next two weeks and I was scheduled to go on the last day of class. I figured that since I talked about how music has impacted my life in my autobiography that I could just talk about that part and then perform a song for my class with my guitar. I guess you could call it my way of taking the safe way out. However my perspective on this whole experience would soon change.
As people began presenting about their adolescence the atmosphere in our class became a tremendous bonding experience between all of the students. Many deep and personal experiences were shared and many emotions were felt by everyone. I was simply amazed by the experiences some people had to go through in their lives and how they were able to overcome so many different things. I can't really explain it but I grew to love every person in that class and felt a bond to everyone seeing how they were able to become such strong people! As my time to present drew nearer I had a more peaceful feeling about sharing more personal experiences from my life to the class. So this last Thursday night was when I presented. I ending up sharing a few different things including a little about my parents divorce and my eating disorder and about their impact on me as well as the positive growth I experienced. I then played and sang a song that for me sort of resembled parts of my adolescence. Over all my presentation went really really well!
At the end of class, our professor had us share what we thought of this whole experience of getting to know who we have become and why. I felt that this experience was a way to understand that we as human beings are really a lot more alike than we think and sharing these kinds of experiences helps us realize that. It also made me gain a respect and greater faith in people even though we may be very different. This experience has helped me gain a greater faith in myself and helped me to understand who I have become and why that is. Dude I think that everyone needs this experience, what greater gift can you give yourself than to come to a better understanding of who you are!
Now I am not saying that I always perfectly understand myself or the things in my life but I have become more aware the experiences that this life holds for me and of all the great things that I can learn from them. In short I have learned that life is good, in fact life is amazing! We have the potential to make it better every day we chose to really truly live with no regrets, no fear, and a heart that is wide open!!
No comments:
Post a Comment