Never Stop Smiling

From the beginning I knew this was going to be a hard unit to tackle. It was going to involve so much thinking and analyzing of other people but most importantly, myself. I'm going to make some important discoveries about myself and probably put my whole life into perspective.

            For example, you know those everyday things we do that we take for granted, like eating, talking, smiling, yelling, frowning and anything involving our lower jaw? Imagine you couldn’t do any of that. Yeah, it’s pretty hard to imagine but that’s what Roger Ebert has to go through for the rest of his life. If you’re not familiar with him or his struggles, this article has everything about him. You may remember him as the famous movie critic but right now his life is completely different. Even after numerous surgeries and the eventual loss of his lower jaw along with his ability to eat, talk, and show any kind of emotion, he’s still doing what he does best: writing.


He's lost the muscles to frown, so it looks like he's always smiling.

            After reading this article, I was left with a mess of emotions. In made me realize that we worry over petty things in life and this article put things into perspective. In short, it’s easy to say he’s an amazing man but he’s lost so many things we do easily. In his shoes I don’t know if I could continue living like he does. He lives through rudimentary sign language and his laptop, using it as his mouthpiece. His connection to the world is the Internet and he has to depend on other people for simple things.  His wife helps him so much and the love they for each other is incredible.

        In fact, the way he takes everything is stride makes me a little jealous. He has no choice but to smile each day and to accept his lifestyle. Of course he’s still living though the pain every day, but it seems like he’s come to a sort of peace with it and accepts it. I don’t know how to explain it but his will to survive is so strong and he’s happy with what he has. I admire him so much for that and the inspiration he brings to move forward through anything is phenomenal.
           

Live everyday like it's your last...

Humanity, Hope, Human Spirit

When this unit began, I wasn't sure what to expect but this one quote kept running through my mind, "Live everyday like it's your last." It's completely cliched, but it got me thinking. Honestly, we don't know what's going to happen each day and what surprises it's going to bring. Not many people actually live this way, including me. We have excuses for that like, "I can't" or "I can't afford to." Very few people live like this and that's the kind of people that I would like to focus on.

 I knew we would be talking about how some people find their best in the darkest of times, but I'm glad to see we'll be looking at old and young people both. When death is right around the corner and you know it, it's amazing how some people find hope to do incredible things in the time they have left. In the same vein, it's also amazing to see how devastating disabilities don't stop the strongest human spirits. There's so many different directions that I could take but I want to look at all types of inspirational people in this unit.

Hello!

Let's start with a little intro, shall we?

My name is Anushiya and I'm a 10th grader with an unhealthy obsession with books. I'll read anything from biographies to fantasy and once I start, I can't seem to stop. Actually, my life consists of friends and family, books, food and music in that order.  Living without music and food is impossible for me and I'm usually quite happy. I hate to see others upset and I love to make them laugh. Future outside of school is a little bit away and I'd like to keep myself firmly in the present.

And as of right now, the present involves my Gifted and Talented class in my High School. It's a challenging class but it provides us, the students, with more freedom to do what we want to do and how we want to do it. Right now we're starting a new unit on humanity and hope and how some humans find the best of themselves in their darkest hour. It's unusual that a person who knows that their end is near lives their life much more to it's potential than a person who doesn't know their end. What makes it so?

I'm going to be finding my own way through this extremely confusing journey with this blog to document all of my thoughts. So... join me!