How does a person take a critical look at who they are? I don’t really know the answer to that, but the class I’m taking is sure causing me to think. As I continue to read the essays for our first week, I find myself being challenged to evaluate who I am, against what has been written.
Each essay is drawn in a different style; one is an interview, another is from a journalist, another written as a background piece on the person writing it. Although the styles have not provided anything new, the content in each has caused me to think more about my own reactions, to what I have read. Each essay has given me insight into other peoples attitudes, backgrounds, and personalities. When compared against my own ideals, it’s caused me to take a more critical look at myself; a more critical look at who I am.
The first essay, the interview one, had a woman speaking about how she finds more community by living in the city, than living in the suburbs. She spoke of her children having more to do, and not feeling so lonely. Perhaps it’s part of a persons individual social structure. She indicated a need to have a lot more people around her, whereas in my case, I tend to want less people around me. I really don’t like anything larger than about 15 people. I hate crowds, and “shopping seasons”. I will go out of my way to avoid being among too many people. I’m very different in that respect, in that some people want the hustle and bustle of the big city, and I am very happy and content living in the country, with the nearest neighbor being much more than just a stone throw away.
Moving on to the next essay, the author wrote about his small clique, or group of friends from childhood who still got together in the old neighborhood. If it weren’t for the author’s inclusion of various details like attending college, or the background behind certain behavior, the reader might view this piece as “gang” related. In a way it, but in many cases when person thinks of a “gang”, they immediately envisions drugs, guns, and other unsavory behavior usually relegated to “hoodlums” as we used to call them. But it’s not necessarily the case. This author’s gang was non-violent, and it wasn’t so much a “gang” but rather a group of friends, and how they hung out together. I don’t think I ever really belonged to a group of friends like that, nor did I really desire to. I guess maybe I had been raised differently, and reading this essay really made me think about that.
I’d always looked at people that did these sort of things ad being hoodlums; kids who were destined to get into trouble one way or another. And that is an unfair assessment. So in the end, I need to take more time when looking at this kind of behavior; these kinds of kids. They may not be bad really, just like the old adage that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, so too you can’t judge a person by the way they hang out.
In the third essay, which was more a news article, with a plethora of facts and observations, I was again approached with changing a paradigm of what I currently think. This time, the subject was about college campus groups, and how they are becoming more specialized. I’m not sure what to make of it all really. I’d like to think America has made progress in diversity, but this information at first appears to show a greater segregation of cultures and beliefs. Then again, our society appears to be more interested in finding others we are “most” compatible with. Whatever happened to diversity? It’s still out there, but in a much different form.
All this has caused me to start thinking more about me. Am I getting old and stoic in my beliefs, ideals and perceptions? Should I even worry about it? Perhaps in the end, all this does is illustrate how I still carry insecurities, even after 40 years.
Asa Jay
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