The Pride Cycle

How can having ambition and goals affect our lives for the good and the bad?

            You may have noticed that recently the world has started to become more and more competitive in colleges and jobs. More people are entering university than ever before. What was once a relatively simple matter is now a matter of serious apprehension. Getting into college consumes the minds of the college bound seniors. For me, I have been very nervous about whether I would get into college. Like many kids, I realized that the competition is fierce to get into universities. Some kids just don’t apply because they think that there is no hope for them. Fortunately, I believed in myself enough to apply, and luckily enough, I got in to both ASU and BYU, with a scholarship at ASU. I was immensely relieved by this. I kept thinking that I didn’t do enough applications, that I didn’t have good enough grades, that my essays weren’t long enough, that I wasn’t in enough clubs, you get the idea. I was tormented by fears that I had not done enough. Nonetheless, I did do enough and I got in.

            If we don’t have any ambition, how are we supposed to do anything worthwhile in life? The truth is that we can’t. If you have nothing to hope for in life, nothing to strive for, and no goals to endeavor to fulfill, we cannot expect to have any happiness. The only thing that we can do is to simply believe in ourselves. If we have a belief in ourselves, than we can accomplish anything. Sometimes, the only thing that we have done wrong is to not believe in ourselves. If we can attain confidence in ourselves, we will create goals and find ambition in life. When we have ambition in moderation, there comes a greater meaning to our lives. Nevertheless, this can also lead to an evil thing if it grows out of moderation. Too much ambition can destroy the lives and the careers of the people around us. Too much confidence leads us to pride, self-centeredness, and greediness. Once we gain too much pride, a disaster strikes us bringing us back to square one. This disaster can be absolutely anything that reduces the confidence in ourselves. The cycle continues like this endlessly unless we find moderation in our self-esteem.

This cycle is called the Pride cycle. It starts at the stage of self-doubt, progresses to self-confidence and ambition, and then progresses to pride and over ambition, then returns to the first stage. Even now, each of us are probably at some point trapped in this cycle. In order to find true, lasting happiness, we must find that point on the cycle where everything is in moderation, and learn to stay there. We must gain self confidence in ourselves, but also we need to temper that with the knowledge that we are not better than our neighbors. We must strive to never think of ourselves in a way that is greater than we actually are. In this we can find inner peace; peace from our doubts and our pride. The greatest among us are the ones that can balance ambition and humility, accomplishment and failure. When this is done, we can leave the Pride cycle and enter the cycle of peace. 

Pain

How can pain make us stronger?

Recently, I had to miss two days of school this weekend. You may think I am lucky, since my weekend turned into a 6 day weekend, but I am not. The reason that I was gone those days, was because I had to get my wisdom teeth removed. If you have not had the pleasure of this happening to you yet, then I suggest that you run for the hills (just kidding, don’t).

My dentist tells me that particularly my experience was much worse than what most people have to go through. He had to cut one of my teeth in half, and another one of my teeth was underneath a bone, so he had to cut right through the bone. While the experience was terrible, I can honestly say that if I needed to, I would do it again. While this may sound crazy, I think that experiences like this really do benefit us in the long run. Having pain like this makes us more capable of handling pain in the future. Pain is going to come whether we are ready or not, and if we have experienced pain before, we will be able to endure the future pain better. I think that this is why that everyone has wisdom teeth and has to get this operation done. It is not simply a flaw in our bodies that we have these teeth. Consider the example of a medieval battle. Let’s say that one side of the battle did not temper their swords when they made them, and the other side did. They thought that tempering the sword would just make it weaker because you had to break it down so much. So what would happen when that one side tried to use their swords? Their swords would shatter upon impact leaving their owners at the mercy of the enemy. Our lives could be like this if we do not feel some pain in the relative safety of our homes. We will shatter ourselves against the first challenge that we meet in our lives. It is what we do after we face these challenges that really define who we are. If we sink into a deep depression, or we decide to be cheerful and just take life day by day. It is these choices that show what we are made of. That is why it is so important that we feel pain and face challenges before we leave home. So don’t be afraid and go get your wisdom teeth pulled out, because it will only make you stronger; just like the song, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

Pain is an important aspect in all of our lives that we really need, but don’t really want. It is kind of like High School, we really need it, but we don’t really want it. I know that if we just accept pain as part of life and do our best to overcome it, we can be better people because of it.

Skiing

Is solitude better than companionship?

                This Friday, I went on a skiing trip with my brothers and my dad at Sunrise. This ski trip had been postponed two different times, so I was pretty excited to finally go. What made it even better was the fact that I was missing school to do it. The reason that I was doing it on Friday was so we could get the discount for scouts. All scouts could go and ski for 60 dollars.

                To go on this trip, I had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning, so we could get the most time skiing as possible. When I got there, I immediately got my rental skis on, and shot off for the lift by myself. I went up and down the runs a couple times, but eventually I got a little bored skiing by myself. I realized that it wasn't as fun just doing it by myself. So I came down the mountain and looked for my family. They were just finishing getting their skis and their clothes on. I felt a little bad, because of how slow they were taking. I went with my dad and took them to the bunny hill to help them learn how to ski. I especially tried to teach my youngest brother, Jonah, who is 8. He quickly got the hang of it and wanted to go on the bigger runs. So I took him up to the easiest run on the resort, fairway run. He took to skiing like a monkey eating bananas. Pretty soon, I realized that it was more fun teaching him how to ski, then skiing off by myself. After a while, I decided that he was ready for a bigger and better run. I took him on a blue run. Now, if you don’t know the levels of ski runs, they go like this. Greens are the easiest ones, blues are intermediate, blacks are difficult, and double blacks are just plain intense. To get a scale of what these runs are like, a green would be something like skiing down 8^th avenue. Blues are much, much harder. So anyway, back to the story.  I took Jonah on a different lift, a high speed quad (a lift that seats four people). This lift took us to the top of the mountain to the harder runs (the view from up there is absolutely amazing by the way). When Jonah first saw the run we were going on, he thought we were skiing off a cliff, and indeed it did look like that until you started down it. Jonah did very good until he got to a steeper part of the run. He crashed and was unable to get down for 20 minutes. He had to crawl down on his but down the run. It was quite amusing to watch. When he got down, he acted like he had just finished climbing Mount Everest.

                From this experience, I realized that is better to be with other people and not just be by yourself. You will probably have more fun if you stay with other people. Also if you crash and hurt yourself, you have somebody to help you get down off the run.  We always need a buddy to stick with. 

Memories of High School

How has school affected my life?

While I can honestly say that school sucks, I cannot admit that it hasn’t changed my life. School has affected every single aspect of my life. It sucks away my free time, makes me stress about stupid things like tests, changes my social life, and yet it also gives my life a purpose, a meaning.

Just consider how you would be different if you didn’t have to go to school tomorrow morning. It is surprising to find out how many changes would result. I know that I would be acting very different right now. For one, I would probably be staying up way later than I should, and second I would not have any plans for tomorrow whatsoever, except to sleep. I think that making plans makes you a more productive person and gives you something to look forward to. When I know what I am going to do tomorrow, I am usually a much happier person, unless if it is a test, then I just want to get it over with as soon as possible.

Right now, if I dropped out of high school, I would probably turn into a lethargic, fat hobo. As much as it pains me to admit it, school has affected me positively. Another thing that has given me this perception of school is sports. Being on a sports team is like being in an extended family for a while. What makes it even better is when your team wins. Especially when winning is completely unexpected. When the Chess team went to state, we were ranked as one of the lowest teams there, but we didn’t let that get us down. We just beat everyone anyway and took ninth, needless to say, we partied all night. I have to say that I won’t soon forget being on the Chess team.

The other sport that I have been doing for the past three years, Track, starts tomorrow. The thing that I like about Track is that it is all individual. You are constantly competing against yourself. It is the greatest challenge that anyone can ever undertake, because you can never truly win. You can only progress. While it is true that I am amazing at my events, shot put and discus, I will never truly have won, like you can in other sports (basketball, baseball, football). I will only admit my success when I have become the world champ.

So basically the main point of all of this is to cherish your school years, because they are almost over.  If we are not careful, they will slip by without us knowing. The only way for us to make these past years of hard work truly pay off, is for us to recognize that we are better because of them. I know that I am.