Since we are kids we’ve been introduced to the idea of good and bad, right and wrong. When we sat down to watch cartoons or fairy tales, there was always a villain, the bad, who tried to overpower the hero, the good. We have been presented with so many forms of this duality, that we start believing it. We tend to live in a black and white world. About two weeks ago I was brainstorming ideas for my IA project, something that I had been keeping in the back of my head for days now. So many thoughts were running through my mind, that it drove me crazy, creating a chaotic state of mind within me. The project I would come up with couldn’t be too challenging, trying to stay within my comfort zone. Was I playing the game? No, I wanted to say, but I knew, yes was the right answer. We are constantly trying to seek pleasure and avoid pain at all costs. Wanting to be comfortable, we are kept in the constant push and pull between desire for pleasure and avoidance of pain; we restrict ourselves to see only two shades, avoiding everything else. Missing all the color and potential that exists in between those two colors. There is a spectrum of colors in our minds, we have the potential to see life through different colored glasses. We can interpret it an infinite number of ways. Eventually, our minds have the power to color everything. WE have the choice to make our experiences the way we want them to be. WE have the power to choose how to view them. That way we choose how we want to do in life, allowing us to achieve any goal that we set out to accomplish. It depends if you look through the right pair of glasses and what hue you’re coloring them with-light or dark. When you stop fearing that pain and inconvenience, start releasing the pleasure and comfort, and are willing to go through challenges and out of your zone, that’s when the world isn’t in grayscale anymore, and you’ll start seeing new colors. Suddenly, you can see things in ways you’ve never seen them before. Remember, the moment we engage with a specific thought, it becomes integrated within us. So don’t get trapped in the black and white; don’t get fixated with duality. A life dedicated only to that is a flat, boring and comfortable one. You have the ultimate choice to let a thought into your mind or keep it out, control it and redirect it to the spectrum of colors and challenges.
2 Comments
Dharma
4/12/2016 08:45:22 am
Cristina, I really like this blog post! I love the metaphor you used of the colored glasses, and how you made a personal connection to it. In life, many people as you mentioned only choose to see things though one lens, one color. But really, if we open our minds to all the color, there are endless possibilities. To make this even better, I think you should try and create better transitions from paragraph to paragraph, because some of them, like paragraph 2 into 3, and paragraph 4 into 5, switched ideas very suddenly, causing me a bit of confusion. Also, in paragraph 2, when you are giving the personal example, you have a few language mistakes, like when you say "The project I come up with couldn't be too challenging, trying to stay in my comfort zone." Here you need a transition word.
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Bon
4/15/2016 08:14:09 am
Cri, you're being thoughtful and identifying patterns in your life. I love the metaphor of the colored glasses because it hints at a gradual transition between the two extremes. One aspect to work on is to connect this concept, once again, to you. How are you applying the advice you give the reader?
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Cristina BarclayCurrent eleventh grader at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt, taking the IB diploma program. Archives
May 2016
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