Personal Post 2

http://www.snopes.com/science/dhmo.asp
I read this over the weekend, and thought it was super clever.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

For the past week or so I've been reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It's a book by Milan Kundera about opposing views and feelings, and how it relates to life. He talks about Nietzsche's idea of eternal return, and whether it would be better to have the unbearable responsibility of living over and over again, or the unbearable lightness of living once, never really experiencing anything. He then goes on to talk about the opposing views of love. He does this by telling a story of two lovers, who had a passionate love at first, but then their love started to suffocate each other. The man loved the woman, but couldn't let go of his other lovers, and didn't see why his wife cared so much when he only ever wanted to fall asleep with her. For him love was wanting to wake up in the middle of the night with somebody beside you. For the woman love was being made to feel like an individual. Her only ambition was to feel different, special, "like the crew of her soul was being called to the decks of her body". Because her husband was always cheating on her she felt as if she was just one of many, and that he was drawing an equal line between her and every other woman. This book has had a very profound impact on me so far. It's changed the way I've viewed things like life, love, and feelings. I've come to realize that the reason so many people have disagreements is simply because the meanings they give to words, or feelings differs from that of others. While somebody may feel that a certain word contains a specific connotation another person could feel the complete opposite. It's been slow reading for me to get through, since there's so many different ideas I've never been exposed to before, but I'm really enjoying it.

Personal Post 1

Writing Response

So far we've done the blogging, doodling, and listography as different ways to express ourselves. I HATED the doodling because I suck so badly at drawing... Even Jess made fun of my Canadian maple leaf.. And when Jess makes fun of you you know it's bad. Whatever, the husky more than made up for it I'd say. Blogging hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. I don't know if I could do it on a daily basis like other people though since I have no idea what I'd write about, but I'm all for using less paper and this is a really cool idea on how to minimize that. Listography has been my favourite though. It was an interesting new way of getting out information and I'm the most comfortable with it since it's practically like a to do list or whatever. In the future I think it'd be cool to write a child's story or something like that, like a fairy tale or whatnot. What is a WRN... I feel like it's a bad thing I don't know this

Reading Response #1

This weekend I read the novel Push by Sapphire. It’s a novel about an illiterate girl named Precious Jones and her journey through life, even though what life has given her so far is anything but pleasant. When I first started reading it I was extremely repulsed and angry because Precious’s dad raped her when she was 7, and started molesting her when she was 3. It’s written in a style that would be verbatim for a girl growing up in Harlem, and at first I found it hard to read, but in the end it made the story more than what it would have been if it was written how regular books are. At first I couldn’t relate to Precious’s life because I’ve never grown up in the ghetto, and I had great parents, but when I started to think about it I realized I could relate to her in a way. I still couldn’t relate to the atrocities she had to deal with every day, but I realized that her story is like a lot of others in the world. While the government laments about welfare and how it’s a vicious cycle, a money pit, this story made me realize that they don’t care at all about the people accepting the welfare checks. They only care about how much money they spend and don’t fix the problem at the root. Nobody ever helped Precious, even when she told the nurses that her baby was fathered by her own father. Nobody ever asked her if she understood what she was being taught, and was pushed through the system until one teacher decided to take the initiative to suggest alternative school for her. This book is also about going farther than appearances. From the outside it would seem that Precious was stupid, and was just like all the other stereotypes growing up in Harlem; an unintelligent teenage mother destined to become a drain on the city. If you really got to know her though you understood that she was a girl just trying to get through a heart wrenching and terrible situation, and that she had a hunger to learn and better her prospects, if only someone would give her the chance. This book taught me to look beyond first impressions, and that even though sometimes life deals you a horrible hand you can still persevere and find goodness in it, and be a good person yourself. It was an extremely inspiring book.

Listography

In the "biggest pet peeves" it's: people who clip their nails in places other than the bathroom, uneven stairs, people who complain a lot, and loud breathing.

My digital footprint

So our assignment was to google ourselves and see all the information that came up. I guess because of my diving I have a lot of websites connected to me and most of it was harmless but this one site had a whole bunch of information on me like age, graduating year, school, and clubs I was associated with. Creepy right? I guess there's a lot people could learn about me if they wanted to. Good thing I'm not that interesting!

Blogging 101

Hi everyone! So my name's Morgan, and I've never really had a blog before. I've had social media sites like facebook, but I haven't really used them as a means to express my thoughts. To be honest I find it kind of uncomfortable that anybody who's looking can find out what I've thought and written about, but I guess I'll give it a go. Other than that I don't really think there's a lot to say- I'm pretty average. One thing that's kind of interesting is that I've had the good fortune to travel a lot in my 17 years, and can say that I've been to every province except for Newfoundland. I hope you enjoy my blog!