I love your style of writing and the organization of it with subheadings.
This section was beautifully written:
I held the ethical principle in my palm, like a small flower. I stared at it for a long time. And then I started to spin it gently, looking at it from all angles, probing with my fingertips. When I was ready, slowly, I began to pull it apart. Petal by petal, leaf by leaf, revealing its soft and complex innards and hundreds of fertile seeds. As I inspected each piece, I questioned them. Their purpose. Their necessity. Their possibility and their shortcomings.
And today, I can walk through a garden of unique flowers, born of those seeds. I cherish my favorites. But I also respect those I dislike in a way I never respected their progenitor, in a way born of understanding for all they are and all that has shaped them.
I too had a mentor who I venerated and felt lost when he disappointed me.
Excerpts (and slightly modified) from my journal on a past idol who let me down:
In my adolescence, I too was misled by one of my idols, a cousin. He lived 8 blocks from me, was 2 years my senior, and we went to the same high school. I strived to emulate his image to the tee. He was top 5% of his class, a straight ‘A’ student, popular, and always dating gorgeous women. A full-ride scholarship to a four-year university helped him become the first person in his family to attend one.
I was partially inspired by him to achieve principal honors (the equivalent of dean honors in high school) in my junior year of high school.
Still, the elder gifted scholar lived a double life, where he engaged in unethical activities. Seeing my hero able to achieve academic, social, and financial success while engaging in such immoral behaviors, I felt justified to follow suit.
He didn’t know about my unscrupulous actions for a year but when he became aware, he gave me advice on how to get away with it and how to improve on it. Not on how to stop. In fact, my mentor would pick me up around the corner of my house to drive us toward inequity.
We parted ways when I realized I couldn’t be around a lifestyle I saw destroy his life and potential. His double life led him to lose his scholarship, have to drop out of college, and strain his relationship with his parents. Sleeping on park benches and couch surfing among miscreates became his new nighttime routine.
My view on scholastics became distorted. The man I had worshipped had given up on academia. If my cousin, the golden boy from the block who shared many of the same obstacles I faced, couldn’t succeed in university, how could I? Can I only prosper if I follow his unethical principles?
It took months for me to realize that no failed idol, no statistics, and no peers, should discourage me from achieving a higher education. Although my life of impropriety is far behind me, I still crusade learning from my past and mistakes.
“ Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others… Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
-Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
I love your style of writing and the organization of it with subheadings.
This section was beautifully written:
I too had a mentor who I venerated and felt lost when he disappointed me.
Excerpts (and slightly modified) from my journal on a past idol who let me down:
In my adolescence, I too was misled by one of my idols, a cousin. He lived 8 blocks from me, was 2 years my senior, and we went to the same high school. I strived to emulate his image to the tee. He was top 5% of his class, a straight ‘A’ student, popular, and always dating gorgeous women. A full-ride scholarship to a four-year university helped him become the first person in his family to attend one.
I was partially inspired by him to achieve principal honors (the equivalent of dean honors in high school) in my junior year of high school.
Still, the elder gifted scholar lived a double life, where he engaged in unethical activities. Seeing my hero able to achieve academic, social, and financial success while engaging in such immoral behaviors, I felt justified to follow suit.
He didn’t know about my unscrupulous actions for a year but when he became aware, he gave me advice on how to get away with it and how to improve on it. Not on how to stop. In fact, my mentor would pick me up around the corner of my house to drive us toward inequity.
We parted ways when I realized I couldn’t be around a lifestyle I saw destroy his life and potential. His double life led him to lose his scholarship, have to drop out of college, and strain his relationship with his parents. Sleeping on park benches and couch surfing among miscreates became his new nighttime routine.
My view on scholastics became distorted. The man I had worshipped had given up on academia. If my cousin, the golden boy from the block who shared many of the same obstacles I faced, couldn’t succeed in university, how could I? Can I only prosper if I follow his unethical principles?
It took months for me to realize that no failed idol, no statistics, and no peers, should discourage me from achieving a higher education. Although my life of impropriety is far behind me, I still crusade learning from my past and mistakes.
“ Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others… Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
-Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian