Entry 4

For the first personal essay, I am still deciding whether I would rather discuss the Amsterdam story below or if I should focus on the following moment of being…

My Second Moment of Being:

While on an overnight school-trip during my junior year of high school, I had a moment of being that has stuck with me ever since.

While our group was on a hike, our group leader instructed us to take fifteen minutes to sit and take a glance at the beautiful surroundings. While looking at the sky I noticed that it was cloudy on one side and sunny on the other. Then, I started looking downwards and noticed that the ground was the same, burnt on one side and lively on the other. To add to the moment, birds were chirping on one side, silence on the other.

I seemed to be starring at the point between goodness and evil, dark vs. light, death vs. life. It made me realize how close in proximity both extremes were. There was the slightest intersection between the two sides that I began to realize how easy I could move from one side to the other. It made me think about my life choices and I started placing all the good choices on the sunny side and all my bad ones on the dark side. It made me realize that everyone has made mistakes as well as done good deeds but that we need to strive our hardest to bring more light into our life than darkness. It made me aware of how easy it is to transfer from the good side to the bad side. With this said, it made me more aware of my choices and life-decisions. It made me realize how every choice has such advantages and consequences and how I must make conscious, rational choices. It made me aware that good and evil do in fact exists side by side and coexists in the world.

All these realizations and more began to come through my mind and my life seemed so clear-cut in front of me. I began to prioritize all my responsibilities and obligations in life and began to realize what things mean more to me than others. This seemed like a moment of clarity, or a sign from God, that changes needed to be made in my life. Actually, I do not think that it was a sign of changes needing to be made, but a sign that I should really value all the “bright” things in my life and strive to eliminate all of my “evils.”

I realize that my moments of being involve moments in nature and in a new environment. I discovered that I need to expand out of my comfort zone and travel to an unfamiliar destination in order to have a life-changing moment. These moments never came to me from the comforts of my own house, yet from the comforts of exploring an unfamiliar destination and noticing the overall beauty around me.