Forgiveness

    Would you forgive someone who attempted to stab you in the face? What if they didn't remember doing it? What if they didn't remember it, but remember wanting to hurt someone else? The problem of forgiveness is a complicated one. Here is a story about a child who had to forgive a grievous injury.

     Deejay Hunter is a New York student with a talent for basketball. He is tall and spirited, but with a scar on his face hinting at a troubled past. Deejay's stepfather, Derick, is in prison, with a sentence of twenty years for two cases of attempted murder. He has, at Deejay's request and after a long legal battle, been allowed to contact Deejay for one day. Deejay will try to get his stepfather to realize his forgiveness, even though he must live with unsettling childhood trauma and a facial scar. When he was younger, a little younger than 10, his parents were locked in a continual feud. His mother put his alcoholic father down verbally almost every day, and his father retaliated until, one night, he had decided to kill. He grabbed a large knife from the kitchen and snuck down to her room. She immediately knew what was happening, and cried out "I love you!" to delay him. He ended up stabbing her, non-fatally, and he does not remember what happened next, being as he was in a drunken rage. Somehow, Deejay had entered the room and somehow he had gotten stabbed as well. A few years later, Deejay talked to him about what he had done. Derick admits he had intent to hurt his wife, but not Deejay.
    I think this story is a little sad, as it is a half-undeserved incarceration. It is also a heartwarming tale- if humans can forgive each other for stabbing them, what are the limits of human generosity?

Prejudice

          America is, in some cases, not living up to its reputation as a composite culture where everyone works as one. Prejudice, the unjustified assumptions we naturally make about people different from us, is still corroding away at the American dream. Historically, it has been blacks and Japanese, traces of which linger today. Once, prejudice was against the French nationality, resulting in French fries being renamed "Freedom Fries", although ironically the food actually came from Belgium. Now, with conflicts in the Middle East, the Muslim religion and people is the main target of primitive hostility.

         An experiment was conducted in which two actors were to appear inside a bakery in Texas. One of the actors was to stand behind a counter and serve goods to people. The other was a woman wearing a burqa, who was to walk into the restaurant and attempt to order something, at which point the first actor would put her down and say "We don't serve your kind here" as well as an assortment of racist epithets. The whole thing would be filmed, and the camera would catch bystanders' reactions to the situation. There were a decent number of cases where bystanders, Muslim or not, would retaliate emotionally and inspiringly. There were a few sad cases where the bystander would agree with the first actor, giving him a thumb's up for patriotism. However, the vast majority of bystanders did nothing at all, which is perhaps more disturbing than the prejudice itself. Tolerance of intolerance is indirectly intolerance itself. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Jordan Burnham's Story

      Every two hours, a person under the age of 25 dies by suicide. There are, however, some people who attempt suicide and are lucky enough to barely survive. One of these people is a young man named Jordan Burnham. As a student, he was always very good at sports--baseball, basketball, golf--but he was depressed for various reasons after failing his driving test and seeing his grades drop. He felt increasingly like he was a disappointment of a son. One day, his father uncovered the bag of alcoholic beverages he had been hiding to quell his anger. Racked with dejection and guilt, Jordan fled to his room and barricaded the door. His mother stood outside and tried to console him, but he was not consoled. That is the last thing he remembers before he woke up in a hospital ward with severe wounds to the everything. He asked his family what had happened to him, to which they responded, "It was a suicide attempt. You jumped out the apartment window."
    It took months of slow rehabilitation and physical training, counselling, a few surgeries and gradual transitions between modes of transportation, but he is finally able to walk with the assistance of a cane, talk, and even play golf. He now works as a motivational speaker at schools, telling kids about his experiences and urging them toward telling someone if they are in a similar situation.
    I feel this story shows the incredible instability of a job relying on an aspect of you independent of your personality- for example, a sports player, a child actor, etc. This allows you to be a complete jerk to everybody and still command respect and high wages because of your physical talent. It also means that if you're a person of great generosity, but a mediocre sports player, or one that used to be great but became physically incapacitated in some way, you can be spurned by your former devotees just because you can't play as well, while remaining the same at heart (so to speak). If you have prepared your whole life for a sports career and suddenly have that opportunity closed, you may find options of things to do with your life become very scarce.

Charlie Wilks

    The blind and other physically impaired people of the world face nearly insurmountable limitations in their journey to achieve their dreams. However, some are fortunate enough to have natural talent, motivation, and acceptance of others on their side, allowing them to pursue their life's ambitions to the maximum extent their bodies will allow. One of these people is the football player Charlie Wilks.

     Charlie Wilks was born with sight. However, as he got older, about the age of 5, it became apparent that his vision was getting worse and worse. As it turned out, he had a large brain tumor which was severing his optical nerve. After 3 painful surgeries, he was left safe but blind. Around this time, he realized a passion for football. He had a family history, too- his grandfather played for the Chiefs in the very first Super Bowl. He would obviously have some challenges to overcome before he could realistically play. After training, he proved himself to be a talented tackler, knowing the right direction to push at the start of a play, earning him the respectful name of  "The Beast". He can make his way easily in middle school football, but his relatives are skeptical of his ability to compete at the high school and college levels. But he has gained fame as the blind footballer, and continues to work toward his goal of being the first blind professional football player of all.

On Life's Ambitions

      Arian Foster, the NFL running back, didn't always have such a positive reputation. As a child, his teachers found it hard to encourage him toward his goal of being in the NFL. They said it was very unlikely he would be famous, that he wasn't running back material. He was not discouraged, and through hard work and perseverance, he eventually became the popular, awarded running back he had always dreamed of being. This story reminds me of the quote from the film Akeelah and the Bee: We may ask ourselves "Who am I to be famous, athletic, heroic?". Actually, who are we not to be?

      Although this story is optimistic and feel-good, I think that in most cases, if people tell you you can't do something, it means that you can't do it. If achieving your dream means disregarding the advice of many of your friends, constant hard work and frequent basic mistakes, I don't think it would be worth it. I think the much wiser thing to do is to look for a job you're already good at and pursue it to easily become a renowned expert at it. If this job happens to be your ambition anyway, then you're all set.

A Sad Story

       Carol Anne Brown was a girl who wanted above all else to race in the soap box derby, a championship in which children build motorless cars and race them around a track. She was a great racer and an inspiration to her family, her coach, and all those who saw her in the big races. However, as she got older, it was apparent to her parents (unintentional rhyme) that she had a secret double life (quite literally). She would arrive home hours after she was scheduled to do so, she would cut her arms with blades, she would seem to have different personalities when she went to bed and when she got up, etc. They tried antidepressants, but the medication didn't have any effect. As it turned out, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, characterized by rapid shifts of emotion. She took therapy and for a while she seemed her old self. However, one day she refused to get out of bed. Her mother, frustrated, left the house to walk the dog. When she came back, Carol Anne was in the closet, with a goodbye letter in her dresser. She had hanged herself.

       Her grieving family felt they should honor her somehow, and she found a legacy in her younger brother Sean, who went on to win the soap box derby, all the while carrying a photograph of his sister with him.

Autism and Genius

           Jake Barnett, a slightly autistic child prodigy, has got it made. At age 8, he was accepted into college. At age 13, he is now a paid scientific researcher and a celebrity on his campus. His capacity for memory and understanding of math and science seems to have no bounds. How is this possible, you ask? How can an eight-year-old have such remarkable brain-power that he can learn 200 digits of pi in an afternoon and the entire high-school math curriculum in two weeks? Because of autism.
          As a young child, he showed the usual symptoms of being antisocial, not making eye contact, being lost in his own world, spilling a box of Cheerios on the carpet and sorting through them (apparently). He was in a sort of social bubble, and needed help getting out. His family hired a tutor, and he has overcome his disability to an extent that he can give demonstrations and advice at his university.
          The particular type of autism he has been diagnosed with is called Asperger's Syndrome, whose symptoms include lowered empathy, specific and intense interests, and social ineptitude. It also seems to produce aptitude in math and science, and he attributes his success to it.
          I think Jake has a bright future and I aspire to be like him, an insightful expert in many fields. I sincerely hope he does the world some good.