Donating means you are selfish and selfless

Everyone sacrifices something. If you are a teenager, you sacrifice your time to go to school, if you're a parent, you make sacrifices for your children. The point is that everyone sacrifices something, if you don't think so, you're wrong because right now you're sacrificing time and energy to read this blog.

Sacrifices can be made for religious, personal, or even societal reasons. Many people do it to be brave and courageous, while others do it because it's the right thing to do. What I wonder, though, is if sacrificing makes people selfish. I believe it does and I believe it does the exact opposite, it can also make you self-less. It always depends on the situation. I believe that if a person is sacrificing something because they are trying to be brave or courageous, that they are doing it for selfish reasons. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but they are only doing it to make themselves feel better. For example, giving away your favorite outfit to charity is a brave thing (especially for girls), but since you're doing it to make yourself feel good, I'd categorize that as a selfish sacrifice. Even religious sacrifices I believe can be categorized as selfish. Those sacrifices are done in order to ensure a long and happy life and/or afterlife for the person making the sacrifice, hence, selfish. Giving something up or letting go of something for another person or for a greater cause I believe is a selfless sacrifice, as long as the person isn't doing it just to make themselves feel better. For example, if that same girl is giving away her outfit to charity because she knows it's a good thing to do, that's selfless and not selfish.

Sacrifices are both selfish and selfless, neither of which make it a good or bad thing to do. Everyone must make sacrifices because it's a part of life. Whether you're a baby, teenager, adult, or grandparent, we all make sacrifices to better our lives and the lives of others.

Question:What matters? Answer:Everything

"I see no reason to get up in the morning if I don't mean to matter." - Tom Peters

I do agree with this quote because if a person in going to get up in the morning and do nothing that matters to them or to anyone else, then what is the point? Nearly everything people do either matters to them or to someone else. Even if it is just going to the beach for the day to tan or running errands, it all matters. Going to the beach to tan might matter to you because you enjoy doing it and running errands might matter matter to a friend or family member because they are relying on you. Doing something that you have to do or just want to do always matters because every action has some sort of physical or emotional consequence to it, either good or bad. Tanning might cause you to feel good and relaxed or bad and burned, and running errands might make you tired and stressed, or happy that everything is done.

It is impossible to never do anything that matters to you or to anyone else. Even if you lie in bed all day and don't move, that is something that matters to yourself. Everything you do matters even if you don't realize it. The hard work you do in school will help you get into a good college and eventually into a good job, so even if you hate it, the work matters. The friendships and relationships you have matter, they give you lasting people to rely on and help you become the best person you can become. The stupid stuff you do matters, it helps you realize that it is stupid and helps you to not make mistakes again. So trust me, even if you don't think it matters, it does, everything matters.

The Nonexistent Free Will

Free will. This is something that I'd like to assume I have, but after reading Never Let Me Go, and critically thinking about free will in my own life, I have come to the conclusion that free will (unless you do not mind consequences such as jail) does not exist.

From birth, we are taught that we can do whatever we want to in life, and that we should follow our dreams because the world is our playground. After our existential unit, though, I do not believe that this is entirely true. I do believe that we can do what we want to in life, and that the world can be our playground, but the fact is that there are always consequences to our actions. We are all bound by the rules and laws of the government, our parents, and even our school. They all say what we can and cannot do and though they might not always be able to stop us, they scare us by threatening us with grounding, detention, suspension, or jail time.

It's true that I can do whatever I want, because my life is my life. The problem, is that if I do care about going to jail and the consequences of my actions, then I don't have free will. I can't just go steal jewelry from somebody's house or kill someone (not that I want to) because the law of the government forbids it. So when we really think about it, we don't have complete free will, that does not exist. I do have the free will to choose to be a good person, to follow my dreams and goals, and to choose other things in life like the right college, but 100% free will does not and will never exist.

Pay It Forward

This weekend, I learned the true meaning and value of helping others. This is due to the fact that this weekend I graduated from National Charity League (NCL), a mother-daughter charity organization, in which I have been involved for 6 years. Our graduation was like a debutante ball, in a sense that we were all graduating as well as being presented to society as women. During this event, I was constantly reminded of all of the hard volunteer work I have done over the years, and how it has not gone unnoticed.

The next day, once the event was over, I went home and finished my book, Never Let Me Go, and it made me think about all of the volunteer work I have done. The existential book constantly makes you ask what is our purpose in life? and what is the point of everything? This, in turn, made me think of all the volunteering I have been doing. In life we are born, we live, and we die, so we are forced to ask ourselves what is the point of doing anything if you are just going to die? Life has been given to us, and it is up to us to take that life and to make the most of it because we do not know what lies for us after we die. And that is how I got to think of my volunteering. There are so many people struggling to make their life the best they can, but they've failed and some point in their life and have not been able to pick themselves up. Sometimes, it only takes one helping hand.

If you have been given many luxuries in life and have been able to live a nice life, as I have, then it is only fair to pay it forward and to help someone else in need. NCL has given me the motivation to keep volunteering beyond the organization and to help those who are less fortunate than myself. If we are only given so much time on this earth to live, we need to make the most of it and need to help those in need make the most of theirs, because before we know it, we are out of time and have "completed". Paying it forward makes you a selfless person while making the world a better place.

PAY IT FORWARD

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Do you Lie?

This weekend has been full of birthdays, in fact, this whole month has. For some reason a lot of my friends, including myself, all decided to be born during this month. Anyways, because of this, I have found myself out to dinner A LOT lately, and while I was out, I couldn't help but think about the poem we read during class entitled "Mirror". While sitting at the restaurants, I noticed all the candles and remembered how someone in class mentioned that the poem talks about a mirror and how it is not moonlight nor candles because that lighting tends to make a person always look good, no matter what. Of course, I completely felt like a nerd thinking about school and poems while out to a birthday dinner, but let's just get back to the point of this blog.

Everyone, especially girls, always want to look good, because if you look good, you feel good. That is why we spend lots of time doing our hair and makeup and why we constantly check, double check, triple check, and quadruple check ourselves in a mirror before we go out. While candles and moonlight, as the poem says, can distort our images into making us look good, no matter what, mirrors do not lie. They tell you the truth no matter how wonderful or horrible it is. The mirror can either be our friend or our enemy, but no matter what we choose it will never tell a lie.

But isn't everyone just supposed to accept us for who we are? Aren't we supposed to be loved by friends, family, and loved ones for our true beauty? Shouldn't our beauty on the inside be equally as important as our beauty on the outside? While these things should be true, they aren't always. Luckily, though, there are lots of people who find beauty on the inside equally as important as beauty on the outside.

So what does this have to do with mirrors? Mirrors are just an object we use to tell us the truth about ourselves. Really, it is up to us to interpret what the mirror says as a positive or negative. People can lie and either be mean or tell you what you want to hear, but a mirror is will never succumb to that. Once we are able to accept ourselves and interpret the mirrors images as positive, then you will be able to find someone that will also see your true beauty. As long as you accept yourself, someone will accept you also.

You Will Fail. End of Story. Get Used To It. :)

This week we read an article from the "Investor's Business Daily" about 10 traits that a successful person should have. The very first one on the list was the one that caught my attention the most. It was: How You Think Is Everything. This one was most important to me because in order to protect myself, I often think negatively. Doing so gives me a reason to fail and makes it okay to fail. I often think that by thinking positively, and then failing, that I will be even more disappointed than before.

I believe that a lot of people feel this way, though, not just me. We are always trying to protect ourselves from physical and emotional pain, both of which can come from failing at something. That's why whether you are taking a test or playing a sport, it is easier to think negatively about what you are doing and to think you are going to fail, that way if you fail it seems justified and if you succeed, it feels even more rewarding. By thinking positively, most people believe you are setting yourself up for disappointment because you are more inclined to be extremely disappointed should you fail.

So how do we deal with this? The easy answer is to just stop think negatively and to start thinking positively, but it is not that easy. If it were, then we would not have this problem in the first place. I believe the first thing people need to do is to have no fear and to practice, practice, practice. In sports, practice is a place where it is okay to try new things and to fail or make a mistake because that is how you get better for competitive games. The second thing people need to know is that it is OK to fail, it is! If we didn't fail once in awhile, then people wouldn't think we were human. I hate to break it to you, but failing is a part of life. YOU WILL NEVER GO THROUGH LIFE WITHOUT FAILING, so get used to it. :)

Competition in life

I felt that with Super Bowl XLIV coming up, what better time to talk about sports and competition than this week? What I found myself wondering was, why does everyone seem to love sports so much? What is it about them that makes us go crazy?

From a young age we learn that life is a competition and that we need to always try to be on top. Whether it is school and grades or sports, we are always trying to do the best we can and also better than the person who is better than you. It's not always about shoving it in the other person's face that you did better or that you are amazing, it is about that self-satisfaction feeling you get from doing the best. It's one of the best feelings when you know you are the best at something, and that is what sports athletes feel and that is why they play on a professional level. Obviously lots of athletes do it just for the money, but I believe there are those who still play because they love the sport and love that feeling they get when they are the best.

I think people love to watch sports so much not just because it is entertaining, but also because it gives us something to be passionate about and when our team is the best, we get the same feeling the athletes get when they are the best. Because our home team represents us, their success feels like our success. Now it always sucks to be the losing team, but that is another thing sports and competition teaches us, how to take a loss. Life is all about failing and overcoming obstacles so it's only natural for people to feel loss and fail during their lifetime. It's overcoming that horrible feeling that makes you a stronger person.

I personally LOVE sports, especially football, and I strongly believe that by playing sports, you can learn a lot about yourself and learn a lot of life lessons. Competition is something that has been going on in the world forever, whether it's a fight to the death between a hunter and animal or two male birds fighting to impress the one female bird, life is all about competition. We love it because it is entertaining, we can relate to it, it teaches us a lot, and most of all it is inspiring. Nothing is more inspirational than making that winning basket at the buzzer or the winning Hail Mary catch for the win.

Winning basketball shot

Winning Hail Mary