Tuesdays With Morrie

This week we watched the movie "Tuesdays With Morrie". Mitch is the main character, along with Morrie, and he's just letting his life pass him by. He's just doing whatever everyone else is trying to do. Juggle work and personal work. Morrie on the other hand was busy living. Living life like how he wants to live, happily. Mitch goes to visit his professor, but ends up going every Tuesday. Morrie can see that he's living his life too fast and not taking time to enjoy himself. 

Being part of the American culture makes us fear death and fear love. Why? Because we value our time and money too much. We think that if we don't earn enough money, then we won't be able to live happily. We're afraid to really love someone because we're afraid to receive that love. We think that love has expectations. We're just so afraid of messing up that love. We fear death but we can't control when we'll die. We also say we're not scared of death but are we really not scared? We're just overlooking it. We just give the thought of death a brief second before moving on to something else. We haven't been in that situation ourselves so we can't really empathize as much. We use defense mechanisms.

Morrie said that he's not dying but living. I think in a situation like his, you really start to value what your life's meaning was about. You start to reflect how you lived your life. I think that we really do start living when we grow older because there's not much to lose. We've already experienced enough and seen enough. We start observing others lives and how they're living. 

I always try to distract myself from facing something because I'm too afraid to face it. It could be the smallest thing, but I still ignore it. I sometimes try to avoid people in the hallway just to avoid the awkward "Hey!" or "Hi!". This seems silly but we do that all the time. Sometimes the past teachers we've had. I say that I'll keep in touch with someone but I don't because I want to avoid the awkward catching up. We always use something to ignore others. Excuses. 

Our Values

This week we talked about our values. We read an article that described the 13 main values Americans live by. It was kind of weird to read the values that I lived by and how different others values were. Values make us ethnocentric. We might think, "Doesn't our values make sense? Why doesn't anyone else live this way?", but others might think the same way about their cultural values. It made me realize that some of the values that we, Americans, live by aren't so good. But however, I still feel that because I lived this way my whole life so far, I wouldn't really change it unless I'm in a different country. I've adjusted to this value that it'd be weird to change it. It's not like those small changes we adjust to, but it's going to affect major events in my life. Time, for example, is something that I can not change. In Brazil, they don't really care that much for time. In America, time is everything. Having a schedule and knowing what you're going to be doing is helpful not only to you but those around you. Of course you would influenced by certain value by your environment, but I doubt that time would be something that we would not consider a value. It would be really hard to change values unless your environment is that way as well. It would be easier to have different values if your really young because then you're also learning everything else as well. 

God Grew Tired of Us

This week and last Friday, we started watching the documentary film "God Grew Tired of Us". The title was very interesting and appealing. How can God grow tired of you? It was hard to hear how they had to walk 1000 miles to get to Kenya and the things they had to face to get their. I once took a road trip with my family to North Dakota. While we were driving, I was so bored and hated how we couldn't just take the plane. I complained about how long it took. It was a 15 hour drive.

For "The Lost Boys of Sudan", it took them 5 years to walk 1000 miles. After learning about that, I felt stupid about myself and kind of how our society is today. We always complain about dumb things and those dumb things aren't so dumb to "The Lost Boys". I really liked the documentary because it really teaches us what our lives have become.

Supposedly when the lost boys came, we were teaching them what our culture is like and how we function but they also taught us that we really need to spend time with those around us. Some teenagers complain about wanting their own rooms, but they had to sleep on the ground together. We really should show how grateful we are once in a while. We should really take time to enjoy the things we have and not think about the things we don't have. We are all fortunate in some way. We, as Americans, may have had the food and the opportunity, but the Lost Boys had that close relationship with each other and that warm brotherly feel.