Entry 19 - DYK and "Big Fish"

- From having lived on this Earth for about 16 years, I have learned a whole bunch of lessons that I plan to carry to my deathbed.  These lessons have been both spawned and developed over time, and came to be in the first place thanks to certain moments of life I shall remember and be remembered for for many years after my life.  One such lesson I have come to call my own inspiration is when I learned that confidence was what gives a person the ability to express his or her true colors, as this step can often times be difficult to handle without feeling self-conscious of what others may find wrong with these colors.  My source of confidence in being able to be proud of what I am and what I have done in life so far.  My source of confidence is therefore is knowing that the environment I grew up in and the family roots dug deep into my genome.  In this way, I am proud of my heritage, however complex and unknown it may be, for it is the place from which the genes I hold with head held high.  The “Do You Know” quiz I took in Junior year history class can therefore act as an indicator of a person’s self-esteem like some social psychologist say by exposing the degree to which a person knows about his or her family.  If the person taking the test does cannot answer its questions regarding certain family events and heirlooms, like how a mother and father met, then that person is being left out from knowing what stock he came from and thus what he traditions and quarks he stands for as unique and irreplaceable human being.  

This a picture of myself when I was in Eighth grade and was about to perform in a Spring dance; it clearly shows, at least in my eyes, how supported in my endeavors I have been during my life thus far, this support being primarily provided my my mother, father, and sister

One cannot be confident in the fact that he or she is special if they do not know where their specialty’s potential came from.  If the person taking the test passes and can answer the questions of being in the ‘know’, that person has knowledge of of his or her family history and so is more likely to have a high level of self-esteem for he or she knows what to call their own.  If this person has a good level of self-esteem, they family functioning is most likely to be in tee due to its open airspace for communication, and is most likely to have low levels of anxiety and behavioral issues because of this strong support system.  By having a strong support system, this person is also able to push against most any challenge in life with enough momentum and inspiration.  The various scores given by the quiz offer a sort of gage against which people can test their supply of ‘sense of self’ and confidence.  These two attributes, according to the article described in this link, are gained through experience, with this experience often coming from talking to parents from their life experiences and learning from their mistakes and tribulations.  It is this exposure and the simple act of sitting down with your parents and talking about a shared history that makes a score higher on the quiz, and so it is by having loads of memories with family members that equals a perfect score.  These memories in turn provide an identity that is constantly changing and yet sticks to itself, this balance of evolution and stability being vital to a healthy family full of non-feuding family members who have input to give and ears that will listen.  By having this theory supported by my own brain, I do believe  that DKY quiz scores are something important enough to be measured.  The numbers given, by looking simple and offering a reflective bit of time, are are the equivalent of chisel marks on an archeological site: asking questions about the characteristics of a family and these providing an exciting perspective from which a person can see his or her family chemistry.  Being informal and intuitive, the quiz plants an idea in the test-taker’s mind that sparks a sense of curiosity for the history of their name and the backstory to their existence, seeking to build their confidence almost subconsciously. If a person has a low score, for example, he or she may come away from the quiz feeling a need to find out the answers he or she could not answer and may be interested in knowing more about family life.  For other more aware people, scoring low on the quiz may make them realize that they need to read up on their family’s curiosities and become lost in folklore that have some sort of connection to their own lives.  This important ripple effect the quiz provides people with a hunger for actually learning family life - something teenagers often detest due to a stigma not said - and developing ties to ideas that give rise to loyalties that can help them stay grounded and proud of what their has had to endure over time.  In my own experience taking the test, I came from the classroom wanting to know what makes my grandmother have a permanent glare and what history lies behind this physical phenomena that I can perhaps avoid so that I do end up the same way.  

- The movie “Big Fish”, directed by skilled Tim Burton, was brilliant in my mind, simply because it was able to capture the excitement of imagination and the splendour of having such imagination applied to everyday life.  The two main characters in the film, William Bloom and his father Edward Bloom, are pretty relatable, with the relationship between this father and son sort of representing the fight between a realistic and idealistic approach to life.  As opposed to his father, William has taken a rather mundane route through life, marrying a woman and settling down in city life.  The father, therefore, might be shown telling his son elaborate stories of his own life perhaps to inspire him to enjoy every aspect of life, no matter how impractical or abnormal the aspect may be.  Maybe even, the father is telling such tall tales in regret for not living in such a way.  In this sense and probable explanation, I do believe Edward Bloom was a neglectful father.  Edward has taken the role of a sage towards the end of his life due to the frightening prospect of death he has been faced with, and in this way he desires more than anything to make up to his son the many days he was without him, this sad fact of life being revealed by the son in one of the movie’s colorful scenes.  Edward even realized his failure as a father early on when his son is young.  To fulfill such a soothing of the restless and guilty soul, the father tells lavish stories that comfort the son when he was younger and annoy him as he gets older.  These tales often seek to teach lessons and so in a way the father is living he should have lived for both his conscience and his abandoned son.  This theory of mine, appealing to the dark themes Tim Burton often chooses to tackle, was apparent at the end of the movie, when the characters in the father’s storyboarded life show up at his funeral, certain differences between how the father described them and how they actually looked.  These differences proved the notion that the father indeed exaggerated with the perfect life he depicted, in this way showing the young William that he had a reason to leave him and showing the older William that he was sorry for his neglectful attitude towards father-dom and perhaps how he hoped for his son to live a better life than the one he experienced.  Edward, as William grows, wants his son to not make the same mistakes he did, these mistakes most likely stemming from the fact that he liked the idea of love when it involved a wife and no children.  I do not believe my reasoning proves the fact that Edward was unloving, for he took the time to reconcile, in his own indirect way, the faults he exhibited as a father and put in the effort to telling stories that each sought to make the son proud of his lineage so that he would not end up with a lack of self-esteem after realizing his broken family background.  

This is an interesting photo of one of my childhood creations wherein I entered another world and setup a micro society with beads and anything else I could find in my house that could warp into buildings and a wall

The most important message I received from watching “Big Fish” was the importance of living life without regrets and truthfully.  With carma as my excuse and death as my motivation, I want to experience life in all of its facets, taking advantage of all it has to offer.  After all, it is a place like nowsher we know of in this galaxy of our, heated by sun that just so happened to spawn life that we are proof of.  My conscience and moral compass will not allow me to hurt others as I tackle the various trials and tribulations life has to offer, and my determination and curiosity will allows me the drive to make adventure wherever I go, so as to not have any ‘what if?’ questions in my susceptible brain while on my deathbed.  The koment of the film that incited such a moral to the story being unfolded in front of my eyes,was the part wherein the son is telling a tale to his father about he sees him dying, his death being marked by the things he accomplished in his life.  

This is a picture taken at my graduation from St. Phillip the Apostle School in Pasadena, of my family and I, me ready for the next pages of my life at iPoly High School

Given my thoughts on the truth behind the sugar of the movie, I want that tale of mine to be true and to allow me something I can leave to Earth after death.  I want to become the legend and freedom the biggest fish in the river has for himself.  A time when wonder and imagination affected my life was when my father and I took a trip to a bakery in Old Town Pasadena the night before my middle school graduation.  That might he surprised me with this culinary destination, and while we ate our freshly baked buns with milk brought from our home, I looked at the dark road that was Green Street and ‘wondered’ what would become of me, and ‘imagined’ the things I could and would hopefully be able to do.  One the things I wanted wholeheartedly to be able to have in the future was friends that could last a lifetime, and indeed I have been able to check that goal of mine off my list given my experiences at iPoly.  The question now is: what else can I achieve?

This is a picture of my dog quite a while back, when she was manageable and much smaller and more fluffy; the image reminds me of my desire to be on top of my schedule and the instigator of my future ambitions