Reflection #6 Friendships and Emotions

As I think about the various levels of my friendships, I have to say that I think majority of them fall under pleasure. Pleasure is defined as the level in which there is a mutual enjoyment. As a friend my role is to be supportive, protective, and also entertaining. I really enjoy talking to my friends and also hearing about their problems. Not only do I feel good about helping them, but they find comfort in taking to me. This is a mutual benefit for the both of us. I decided to pick pleasure over utility because in utility while both friends benefit it states they also must be equal. My friends and I are similar in many different aspects but we do not need to be equal to be friends. To take the next step up to virtue, it would require a lot of work. The biggest part of this for me would be trust. And if you have to work hard for someone to gain your trust or work hard to give trust then it doesn’t seem like a true friendship. A friendship should be natural and almost effortless. Often times I feel that I go out of my way for my friends. I find happiness in doing other things for people even if I do not benefit from this. I do this without expecting anything in return. And not to say that my friends are selfless or not caring, but they don’t act as often as I do. There is only one friendship that I have in which I can say it is of true virtue. It is a special relationship and I don’t think it could be ruined even if we tried. I think this is possible because we started from the ground up, and have never regressed since the beginning.

This next question is very deep and one moment in particular sticks out in my mind. One time there was a small family feud. Typically, I am one who keeps my mouth shut, observes what is going on, and then devises a plan on what to do. In this particular moment, I felt as if I lost all of my inhibitions. I know that in this situation it came purely from emotion because it was something I have never done before. I opened my mouth and proceeded to tell a family member off. All my life I have been taught to respect my elders and I had never even had the guts to back talk my parents when given an order or something I didn’t like. However, in this instance I opened my mouth and stood up for what I believed in. At the same time it was hard to choke out the words because I was so upset that I was crying. Another reason I know this was purely emotion is because my family had never seen me do something like this. And to this day, I think I am still shocked that I acted out in this manner. You don’t think about the consequences because you are caught up in the moment and you think about what is the right decision to make for the moment. I know it was the right decision because I needed to speak my mind and force my family to see what was really going on. While it was hard, I believe I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes in life you need to do what is right, even if it is going to hurt someone else. Because maybe by speaking your mind it forces others to think about their own actions.

Reflective Essay #5-Creativity

I like to think that I am a very creative person but as I sit here and think about it I am not sure if I am or not. But then again I think it is just because I am thinking about it. There are many times in life in which we can think of a million examples of something and then once you are put on the spot you cannot remember at all. I am currently having that problem. However, I do vaguely remember a few things from my childhood where I was able to use creativity. Growing up, I lived on a farm. We had all kinds of animals: dogs, cats, cows, horses, and chickens. (Lots of work) Since I lived on a farm, we were located out in the country. Now, I still had neighbors but none them had young children. So, instead of playing games with my friends I was forced to (attempt to) get along with my siblings and play games with them. A large part of living on a farm is a lot of work. We have a huge hay field in front of our house and every summer it needed cut and baled. At the very young age of 8 I learned what hard work was all about. I also learned how to drive a tractor and diesel pickup truck. Our job as kids was to drive the truck around to each of the bales, stop and pick it up, stack it, and then take it all to the barn and stack it there. In order to cope with the fact that I hated lifting so much hay, I used to pretend that they were people who were hurt and they needed to go to the hospital. Then it kind of turned into a race to see how fast we could pick up the hay. Crazy right? Well it might be but it got my siblings and I through the work. Another way I used creativity as a child was making games out of the stacked hay in the barn. Our stacks used to be as high as the ceiling. As we started to feed to horses the hay, it would slowly clear out levels. Perfect for climbing! So we would pretend it was a mountain and had races to get to the top. For some odd reason my siblings and I also had a snow board. Why? I have no idea, but we took a hose a tied it to one of the top beams and used it as a small swing. We held onto that and would proceed to ‘snowboard’ down the hay. It is amazing the things you can think of as a child. I guess it was a great way to pass the time!

At this current point in time I cannot think of a time where I used creativity to get me out of a problem. Maybe if I think of one I can come back and comment but at the moment I am blank. As for a creative scene with the Superheroes, I think the one I remember the most was from a scene in the Captain America movie. As he was charging into the forest he was riding a motorcycle and had many people trying to come after him. He then devised various plans to get them off his tail. This included some sort of rope that strangled them, fire, and other mechanisms. I thought this was a creative way to get away from the enemy. If I were a superhero I am not sure I would be able to think that quickly on my feet.