In an essay for English, we are told to complete a double entry journal connecting a quote from text to text, text to word, and text to self. I have contemplated for the past few days about coming out in my text to self paragraph. I have no clue how I would do it. Any advice? In today’s society, people are constantly being forced to conform into a mono-emotional state of eternal happiness. The absurdity of this being the foundation of our people is barbaric—almost inhuman. Morrie Schwartz, a philosophy professor at Brandeis University, in his final months, taught his last class. One of his students, Mitch Albom, went on to write a memoir about Morrie. In a conversation about emotions, Morrie says to Mitch that ‘“if you hold back on the emotions, if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails”’ (Albom 104). This quote is quite applicable in western civilization as a whole. We are consistently being encouraged to be “happy,” and however great the ideals surrounding it may be, in the end, it makes us feel as if we are betraying ourselves by being anything else. Under specific circumstances, one could argue that if everyone fully expressed every emotion we would live in a world of chaos, and—to an extent—they are correct, because in order to be a civil group of people, we must possess a certain amount of control over our emotions. Nonetheless, this does not imply that we should suppress our emotions entirely. If we do what Morrie says, if we just allow ourselves to go all the way through our emotions, we can be detached. We are so terrified of abjection, of being ridiculed, that we hurt ourselves in the process. As John Green says, “the good times and the bad times both will pass. It will pass. It will get easier. But the fact that it will get easier does not mean that it doesn’t hurt now. And when people try to minimize your pain they are doing you a disservice. And when you try to minimize your own pain you’re doing yourself a disservice. Don’t do that. The truth is that it hurts because it’s real. It hurts because it mattered. And that’s an important thing to acknowledge to yourself. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t end, that it won’t get better. Because it will” (Green ). Morrie’s words are also extremely pertinent in Split, by Swati Avasthi. After being kicked out by his father for standing up to his abuse and beatings, Jace leaves home beaten up and battered with only $3.00 and some change in his pocket. One result of aforementioned abuse is that Jace has anger management issues of his own. On the night he leaves home, he beats his ex-girlfriend during an argument. Now Jace is terrified that he is turning into the monster he loathes. At the same time, he is conflicted by the feelings of love he still has for his father. There is a point in the novel where Jace thinks to himself that “we all screw up. We all wish we were stronger than we are, and not one of us will get through this life without regret” (Avasthi). At this moment, he is finally admitting the same thing that Morrie says. He is stating that we are capable of not following society’s taboo, that strength is not a required characteristic to be human, and that we will do the “wrong” thing at some point in our lives. He is allowing the realization of what he has done to permeate his emotional barrier; he is allowing his pain to felt. The final entry of this assignment was designated for me to connect this quote with my life. This left me to ponder with momentous curiosity of what it was saying. I came to the conclusion that I still have a fear of fear, and I still respond to that fear—part of me is still withheld, part of me is still afraid. My fear comes in the form of severe reticency when it comes to who I expose myself to. It is not until recently that I have began to accumulate quite a number of friends. I need help on how I would draw coming out into the final paragraph. Thank you!
