I had been too far from my dad for many years and I decided to go visit him on Christmas holidays 2006. As the only girl and the baby of the family, my dad adored me and we were too close; I remembered having problems with some of my brothers who pretended that my dad was unfair to have this particular attachment with me and not with them. So, in spite of the fact that we were so far him and I, affection remained the same. I had been through this rough evening of November 2006 when I had received a phone call from my dad saying that he was sick and was in his way to the hospital. Knowing him as someone who hardly complained and hardly been sick, my heart started to pound at cruise speed and I couldn't sleep that night.
As I sat in class the next day morning, my mind was flooded with images of home. In my mind's eye, I saw his room filled with people visiting him and I could feel also his gentle kiss on my forehead at the airport the day of my departure.
I was filled with anxiety, wondering whether he would be all right. My mind was a million miles away when a deep voice rang through my daydream." Do you agree with me, Annie?" I knew the voice was speaking to me, but it took me a few seconds to focus on it. Again the instructor asked, "do you agree with what I just said, Annie? Believe me, I had no idea whether I agreed or not. I had not heard anything; I didn't know what he was talking about. I look at the instructor and out of embarrassment, I answered, "yes, I do". The situation took a turn for the worse. "Why do you agree, give me your reasons." I sat, bewildered, at my desk. I looked down at my notes for help, but I had written only the date and the topic for the day on my notepad. The tension grew as the entire class waited for the answer. I was a week away from all my finals and I had that week for my last tests too. Late that night, I got another phone call from my dad who told me that he will finally get a surgery and then, after that, we will have to discuss as usual about a lot of things. Once again, another rough night for me, waiting to know how the surgery goes. Later on, I talked to my family who told me that everything was ok and then, I will be able to talk to him the following day.
Struggling that night I waited until the morning to talk to my dad, I received the phone call announcing me his death. You can imagine the rest of the details, having tests and finals.
My father's death causes me a huge pain, including depression. After my mom's death, I got the same effects but I didn't have enough time to accept it when it came to my dad's turn. It was difficult situation for me to accept.
No matter who you are, you have no doubt encountered obstacles and challenges in life. Some you deal with and move on, others you carry with you. I believed that no matter how many mistakes I have made, how badly I have really screwed up, how old, worn out, as long as there is true, steadfast ambition, I can summon the courage to deal with issues, no matter how overwhelming, painful, or degrading, that may have plagued or even paralyzed me in the past. With determination, I can stretch beyond the everyday barriers to better myself. Learning from prior experiences, I can and should aspire to fulfill my dreams, making life better not only for myself but for others around me during the course of my life journey. After the death of my parents, I almost lost control, I was fearful because I was not sure to be able to continue focusing on my own life but to resolve this problem, I had to take some other steps; when you have to take a flight, once on board, you have the support of your own personal plan.
At that time, I decided to take the lead in my life: courage, efforts, and determination are some of the points that helped me out.
Two days after the funerals, I had to go back to school and work. Several classmates asked me how I could possibly be so up; they couldn’t understand my attitude after the tragedy. My answer was: I’m ready for the new experience and the new world”. With determination, I
successfully ended my semester. It wasn’t easy but I realized that life is full of
obstacles and challenges and the only way to solve those problems was to consider
its as memories, take another steps and move forward. This situation made me stronger and
more independent. I had to deal with all kind of “up and down” situations, take
care of myself; be able to deal with four brothers.
I developed the self-defense sense in order to put myself sometimes out of trouble. I learned a lot from this experience and today, I not afraid to confront life, I can live anywhere, ready for all situations, ready to find the problem and solutions. In short, I’m now a strong person, independent, brave, I know better my interests and I know to separate things. Face to some situations, I always tries to ignore the one that can take me back before I deal with the rest. I can imagine that some of you too went trough difficulties, tragedy, and so on but don’t give up, be positive, optimist, especially, be brave, don’t let something or someone control your destiny, every one is responsible of his own destiny. Now that I am in America I decided to continue studying and I chose nursing as my major. Because I need to succeed I am putting effort and courage; in short I am doing my best to rich my goal. Nursing has a lot of subjects that students have to complete before getting into the program. Since the selection to get in the program is hard, one needs to be serious doing ones core program and end up with a good or higher grade. Right now I am not very sure about the choice of my major. Besides nursing, I am thinking about interior design as a career, because it is always been my favor subject. Nursing is not something that I like and if I have to do it, it will be for personal reasons. Since my childhood, I always have a strong ability in interior design or decoration in general. Many people in my family, and friends always appreciated the way I mixed colors; many people when having their parties or weddings asked me to decorate their cars, halls, homes, and so on. Making money by being asking to do some decorations at several occasions put me in a total confusion in the choice of my career. At the end, I may do both but I will probably start with nursing because in one hand, it is one of those fields that have the highest employees demand; In the other hand, interior design is my dream’s career, but I am not sure about finding a job immediately after I finish this course. For me it is a huge dilemma and I have to make a decision as soon as possible because I am almost at the end of my core program.
Another problem that I have concerns my private life, and I am thinking about moving to another state. But the fact that I did not finish my course yet makes things complicated. Moving is important for me because at this stage of my life, I am thinking about having a family like every woman of my age. Getting education is important, but it is not all we need in this world. Love, children, and family’s life is also and important part of a joy of human being. All those problems stress me out and since I am a stressful person this kind of situation does not help me in my well -being. Life is full of up and down and only those who do not give up can easily rich their goals. Being pessimist or discouraged does not help, that is why even when I stressed out I always continue to think about the positives side and effect of life. I hope my prayer to what I need to achieve will be exhausted very soon. Health is more important than everything because without a good health nothing can be done in this earth. In short, what I am trying to say is that since I am in good health I know that one day my dreams will come true and I will enjoy the rest of my life with a good career and a joyful family in God’s will.
In life, some people develop spirituality after a good or bad event. Life is full of surprises and we need to be realistic at some point, wherever we are going through.
Other people are not realist, they are idealist and those can easily let themselves be influenced by people, human nature and so on. The power to change anything is something that all of us would like to have. For instance, at work you’re fighting an uphill battle. You’ve given your heart and soul to a quality-improvement but your best efforts to make quality part of the everyday culture have yielded no improvements whatsoever. We’ve come to believe that when we face enormous challenges that can be solved only by influencing intractable behaviors, we might attempt a couple of change strategies. When they fail, we surrender. There are some people who instead of continually seeking the “wisdom to know the difference”, have sought the wisdom to make a difference. Our spiritual traditions suggest that we have considerable room here to change our relationship to the contents of consciousness, and thereby to transform our experience of the world. Indeed, it also clear that nothing need be believed on insufficient evidence for us to look in this possibility with an open mind. Another thing that I learned is that the essence of the universe, the pure state and intention of existence is for love and peace and good.
Finding vitals behaviors is another great thing in human-beings life. Before you can
influence change, you have to decide what you’re trying to change. The big idea on this
part is that: a few behaviors can drive a lot of change. For example, after the death of my
parents, I developed spirituality, another away to see and understand the world. Since
then, I now understood that death is a part of our existence and should be taking
spiritually. Before this tragic lost, I was not taking the idea of the death easily, I always
thought that the day this kind of situation will happen to me, I will die too. Today, with
another philosophy, things are doing better and sometimes, I try to take life as it comes. I
know that when someone dies, it means that it was his day, God have decided to take that
person at that specific time for some reason.
Besides this philosophy, there is something else that I developed called” fragility”.
I’m trying to fight against that weakness but it is not always easy. For example, I
sometimes found myself in tears when I have a problem that I can not fixed and the
simple fact that I think It could be solved if my parents were alive makes me cry. There
are some things I could easily accepted before and that I cannot take anymore, since they
have passed away.
To be positive, I always do effort to think about the purpose of my life because I
know they had a great purpose during their entire life and that purpose was to make sure
their children were sheltered from needs and that they will have a good education.
After a several experience of my life, I came up to terms with beliefs. It was time for me
to recognize that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact,
beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount action in
potential. It should be easy enough to see that belief in the full efficacy of prayer, for
instance, becomes a public concern the moment it is actually put in practice. The moment
we admit that our beliefs are attempts to represent states of the world, we see that they
must stand in the right relation to the world to be valid. It should be clear that if a person
believes in God because he has had certain spiritual experiences, or because the Bible
makes so much sense, he is playing the same game of justification that we all play when
claiming to know the most ordinary facts. People seem to have a very limited capacity to
understand why they are in this world, and they are often hopeless when faced with the
unpredictable events life puts before them. They don’t seem to have the ability to see the
stones on the road, the dangers that are making them fall to the ground, but this limited
perception of the senses is just an illusion. We are trapped in the material world and it is
imperative that we make a shift in our perception, in our understanding that the true
value of life is not the material, it is in the soul. I understood all this after a while; so, I
have learned a lot from this lost of parents. Talking about belief, another one is karma. I
believed that in this earth, everyone has his own karma. If I made a point about karma, it
is because at some point, I started to think that in my mother’s family, it was the case of
the karma. I have always believed that we are everything our ancestors have ever done;
we are the result of all this, which is why our lives and our every action will reflect later
in our children. Karma can be passed down to transferred to you from your parents or
grandparents and, in turn, you can pass it down to your children. There is karma in the
past because of someone’s past actions and everyone becomes affected. In my mother’s
case, her brothers and sisters died from the same disease, (cancer), and they were dying
one after another, from the oldest to the youngest one and this was happening almost at
the same range of time and almost at the same age. I cannot tell for sure that it was karma
but, when putting things together, we are closed to this fact. After all those situations,
there was a need for me to adopt a different way to see life otherwise, I could be
pessimist during the rest of my life.
My intention in my memoir wasn’t to relate you my entire life by purpose, but I just
feel comfortable to talk about some important points of my life since Professor Lunday
gave me this opportunity and I’m so grateful by addressing him many thanks.
My goal in this writing has been to help close the door to a certain style of irrationality
and look the present and the future with optimism because every one has his own destiny
and when things happened, we need to take them like they come and move forward.
