I stand here writing

Trevor Gustafson

I stand here writing


Just like in my last reading response, I would like to focus on one key sentence. This time it is a quote. The quote reads, “Life was not something to be learned but to be lived.” I find that an unfortunate amount of people today are afraid to learn from the mistakes of others. We feel that we must learn for ourselves. Why is it that history is not looked on as an essential subject? It is an important subject because it can teach us valuable lessons about life. For instance, if we were to look back on all the problems that war has caused over the years and how it has accomplished practically nothing, wouldn’t we be more willing to avoid a war? This is not to say that I am a pacifist. There are sometimes reasons for war, namely self defense, but the majority of wars in this world’s history could have been avoided if people had of realized what the outcome would be-nothing. You see that’s what history is. It’s a looking into the future by means of the past. In essence, history is just repeated over and over again because we are unwilling to learn and move on.

Now if a scientist were to try to come up with a theory that someone else had already come up with, say how to make a light bulb, he would be foolish. He would be wise to study the research already done on light bulbs. He could question the theory itself, test it, and see if he can come up with a better way of doing it, but to spend time “discovering” something someone else has already discovered, is utterly pointless. It’s reliving history. When we are presented with evidence, but say we think that we must try everything out for ourselves, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we our discovering something new.

Without learning from history, our society will never progress. Fortunately we do learn from history. Do we question everything that is involved in turning on a light switch every single time we turn on a light in our house? No. Of course not. You see you see we are learning from and accepting history when we accept the research and experiments done by people in the past to discover a way to harness electricity and make it light up our houses at night. We should be, as Henry James says, “A person upon whom nothing is lost.”

Now all this is not to say that there is no place for living facts. Every parent knows that children need to learn some things for themselves. A parent would be foolish to pick a baby up every time it falls. If the parent did this, the poor child would never learn to walk. The parent must let the child learn for himself. All the lectures in the world about the importance of money will do nothing for a child unless he is forced to make his own money.

Unfortunately some parents don’t realize that life is also to be learned. Everyone needs advise. Why should we travel a road someone else has traveled? Now if this is an exiting road, say learning to walk, there might be a difference, but letting teen try harmful drugs when the parent knows people who have gone down that road and discovered it to be harmful and dangerous, would be foolish. Abstinence from drugs is either avoiding harm or the avoidance of unnecessary time spent “experimenting” with that dark and slippery road called drugs. Learning to walk is a good thing. The baby will have to do this anyways. There is a difference in-between letting someone try something harmful and letting someone learn a necessary part of life that will end up being for their own good. Might the baby get slightly hurt when he falls? Possibly, but not nearly as much as he would if he tried going through life without knowing how to walk. The same is not true for trying drugs. The harm is not worth the outcome because no outcome from that scenario is good.

There must be a balance in-between letting a child learn life and letting him live life. To say that someone should learn everything by learning from others would be foolish. In many instances the person would never end up learning anything. But to say, as the authors shirt said, question authority, would be foolish, too. Yes we should question the information given to us, but we shouldn’t try to always come up with that information on our own. We should not be, as the author says, ventriloquists, mouthing words. However we should be open to other’s ideas, not in a believe anything that comes along sort of way, but in a discerning of the advice given us. We must always find a medium. Neither extreme is good. I find that I, to some extent agree with the author that we should learn things for ourselves. However I feel that she leans way over to the side of learning everything for ourselves. I would disagree just as much with someone who said we had to learn everything from others. The point I am trying to make in this reading response is that there must be a balance.

What if someone were to believe everything presented to him? He would end up pretty confused. What if a man was building his house and took advice from everyone passing by. One person said to build a country-like wrap around porch. The builder built this. Another said the exterior walls should be contemporary. Make them out of a mixture of mettle, concrete and bricks. The builder built the walls in a contemporary style. Still another passer by told the builder that the interior should be styled like a Native American hut. Again, the builder built the interior to look like a Native American hut. Needless to say the builder’s house would look very odd. Probably no one would like it. You see the builder didn’t decipherer advice. He just took in everything that came along. This is what happened to the author when she had a practice debate. She just believed a quote she had been given, not even fully understanding it. The result was being picked to pieces by her opponent. She claims that by borrowing someone else’s word’s, she was left with no words of her own. This is not entirely true. She was left with no words of her own because she did not test the information given to her. The author quotes Reynolds Price, “Nobody under forty can believe how nearly everything’s inherited.” If we choose to inherit everything from our parents, and make no decisions for ourselves, our lives will be in a pretty sorry shape. Just like the imaginary house.

Up to this point I have mainly discussed this topic from the aspect of someone giving advice. However we must also look at this topic from the prospective of one who is receiving this advice. A student may be presented with all the right information that a parent, teacher, or book can give him, and yet if he lives life with a mindset of not believing anything, what good are all those resources to him? To refuse someone else’s advice is prideful. Take the classic example of the man refusing to stop for directions. What is he doing? He is refusing to take the advice of someone else. Why? He is being prideful. What will it cost him? Lost time. As teenagers our pride is put into overdrive. If we’re presented with a difficult math assignment, are we willing to go to a friend who is knowledgeable in math, or are we afraid to ask for help? What will we lose end up asking for help? We may end up being slightly embarrassed, but probably not as embarrassed as we would be if we got an f on the math test.

A good balance is where the parent or teacher realizes that sometimes, a person must learn things for himself. In addition, the other end of that is when the student realizes that sometimes he must let go of his pride, decipherer the information given to him, and realize that he cannot always discover everything for himself. As the author says, books give us insight but not answers. It’s what we choice to do with the information given to us that creates answers. The author also says we may never be able to segue our way through life. However, I think that we may be able to smooth the journey if we keep in mind that we can learn from others. As the author says, “nothing reveals itself straight out, especially the sources around [us].”