Its actually pretty ironic how this came to be my favorite quote. I was a freshmen in high school and in my english class we were assigned to choose a quote we lived by; to me I never even lived by any quote or saying, I was only 14 how did I know what to live by? Waiting till the night before to work on this assignment, I came across this quote by Gandhi and I chose it because it sounded smart. The next day I turned in this assignment to my teacher and I ended up getting a good grade even though I bullshitted everything. Whenever I get my work back I always like to read to it over and over again either to see what I did wrong or to internally praise my work in my head. As I read what I turned in and look at the quote more analytically, I realized everything I had wrote down was completely wrong and not what this quote was about.
Reading this quote from Gandhi over and over again started to really make me think about how I look at life and what I was taking for granted. Even though I was only 14, I realized that what Gandhi was trying to get across was pretty damn true. Why was I worried about the smallest things in life like how I dressed or the people I hung out with or being looked down on as a freshmen. I reminded myself that I was only 14 and that there's a whole lifetime ahead of me to ever be worrying about stuff like that. What's the point of living if your constantly focused on pleasing others? The first part of this quote though didnt stick out to me as much as the second part did.
The second part of this quote "Learn as if you were to live forever" is what really changed my perspective when it came knowledge and education. Although I always complained about school, the homework, paying attention and tests but truth is I actually really enjoy gaining more knowledge from everything I've learned and am learning now. As lame as this sounds, if I could go to school without the tests or homework and just have interesting lectures I would. To me I feel like a person can never receive too much knowledge or education, in fact were being educated every minute by everyday life events. If we can all think about the other third world countries with people who would die to receive just a small portion of any education they can, were actually lucky. I'm not only talking about academic education and knowledge, but just knowledge in general. I believe that we were put on this Earth to be educated and fill ourselves with knowledge, so that we can improve both ourselves and the society we live in. When people say too much knowledge is bad, I think that knowledge is only bad when you don't use or gain enough of it but that is just my personal opinion. Life may be short, but knowledge is infinite.
I love this quote and how you explained it. It's not lame that you would go to school just to listen to lectures. I think it's great that you would do that. I would do the same thing. Lectures are usually interesting and professors have a lot knowledge to spread. Great job with the explanation of the quote again! :)
ReplyDeleteI like the way you have framed your explanation of this quote in a personal way. You didn't just resort to platitudes and sparkling generalizations; you discussed its importance in your own life. I thought it was effective in terms of both the assignment and in terms of the rhetoric of blogging. Thanks.
ReplyDeletePost 2- While I enjoyed hearing about "Challenge Day" I would have liked more specifics. What did you personally get out of it? You did that nicely in post 3- keep it up for future posts!
Man i would love to love hearing lectures all day! Although i do enjoy learning, we all know how difficult it could be to sit through them and actually absorb the information. Its wonderful to know that other people like yourself enjoy these iceberg theory quotes as well as the explanation you paired with it!
ReplyDeleteIt's great that you found a drive so early in high school because I'm sure it helped you for the better. It's never to early to realize that what really matters is what you think about yourself and not those around you.
ReplyDeleteI love this quote, and what it means to you personally. It's great how this helped you so early during your high school year. I also agree on you on how you felt about having lectures instead of homework and tests. Pretty awesome if that happened!
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