Bless Me Ultima Journey

Another lesson from the story is to follow your heart and to follow your intuition and understand that the journey to finding your Personal Legend comes with challenges, nothing in life is attained easily, you have to work for it but the reward in finding your destiny is so much greater than the challenge because it is all a constant learning cycle. Yes, you will be tested and there will be times when you may want to throw in the towel and question yourself but you must persevere. “It almost seems impossible until it’s done”. Nelson

Although several aspects of life are predetermined, there are moments people have control over their fate. For example, no one has control over death, and even though many refuse their undeniable fate, it cannot be avoided. However, there are choices we make that mold our future, thus, changing our fate. On various occasions, there will be a fork in one’s path, and that person will have to choose which journey to take. In life, there are small, ineffective decisions you have to resolve, but there are also larger, life altering choices. Of course, others may feel the same way about fate, or entirely different. In fact, since the beginning of time, authors of literature have discussed their ideas on such matters, a few examples being Dr. Seuss, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allen Poe. These authors, famous for their thought provoking literary work, provide differing opinions on the fate and destiny of a human being through the use of allegory.

Mentoring relationships has its roots beginning in ancient Greek mythology, when Odysseus (a.k.a. Ulysses) entrusted Mentor with his son, Telemachus, while he left to fight the Trojan War. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, left home for 20 years on the famous journey that Homer ccalled the Odyssey. Mentor was responsible for raising Telemachus, shaping his character and helping him make wise decisions as he grew up to be a man. Eventually, Telemachus begins searching for his father, and Mentor joined him. The myth says that the Greek goddess Athena assumed Mentor’s form for the purpose of giving advice to Odysseus (Shea, 1997). Mentor’s name, with a lower-case “m,” has passed into our language as a shorthand term for wise and trusted counselor, advisor, teacher and friend. Mentoring is where a person invests time and energy to help another person grow and learn (Shea, 1997). “Mentor served as a coach, teacher, guardian, protector, and kindly parent. Mentor shared wisdom, promoted Telemachus’s career, and actively engaged him in a deep personal relationship (BOOK – Johnson –Ridley, xxx, p. xv). Like today the mentoring model is pairing a mentor and a mentee where the mentor is a role model and provides direction and guidance.

Last school year, a partially blind English 2 Honors student named Matt who struggled in my class due to ADHD medication side effects of drowsiness and decreased appetite. Additionally, Matt became both irritable in disruptive in class. Subsequently, Matt’s mother, counselor, and I agreed Matt would have to commit to working with me during intervention time, nutrition and lunch so that I could closely monitor his progress. Additionally Matt express concern over a novel he was assigned to read entitled Bless Me Ultima. His concern surrounded the themes of Mexican sorcery, magic, and curses covered in the book. I found myself creating a separate curriculum that would satisfy Matt’s religious convictions. By standing his ground, this student ended

Life is like a journey-a roadmap where there are thousands of different roads that lead to millions of destinations. In this roadmap, everyone has the power to choose his own path and decide what roads he wants and needs to take to get to where he wants to go. Sometimes roadmaps are confusing and it can be hard to pick the right road even though it is all laid out.

What does all this say about the human condition, not just in literature but for ordinary, everyday human beings? Do we have any control over the type of persons we become? Is there a fixed destiny in store for all of us? Some combination of the two? Before these larger questions can be addressed, it is necessary to begin with the texts before us. And in order to learn something about the significance of these moments of vulnerability and breakthrough for these heroes, it is important to establish the respective contexts from which they arise.

Everybody must decide who they are to get anywhere in life. This situational archetype of a quest or journey is expressed in the novel How to Read literature like a professor by Thomas C. Foster. Foster talks about how every trip is some sort of quest for the person making the trip. In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the protagonist, Pi Patel, undergoes a journey of self-awakening and discovery. Pi is a young boy when he gets shipwrecked ands lost at sea. Throughout the novel, the older version of himself tells the story of what he went through and learned during the months he was missing in the middle of ocean.

In this inspirational masterpiece, there is a heavenly inspiration within all of us. By struggling for

In reading through Let Your Life Speak, the author, Parker J. Palmer takes the reader through observations from his own life in hopes of enlightening and aiding the reader in their own life and search for vocation. He does this by reviewing various stages of his life. He leads the reader through his time in academia at the University of California - Berkeley (Palmer, 2000, p. 20), his sabbatical period at Pendle Hill (Palmer, 2000, p. 23), a Quaker community and his struggles with depression (Palmer, 2000, p. 56). Throughout each of his recitations concerning the knowledge gleaned from his life, there are major themes that jump out to the reader. Two of those themes are (1) Encouragement for self-reflection and (2) Embracing the journey.

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” pursue the theme of personal destiny. In The Alchemist the main character Santiago is pursuing his personal destiny by going to find treasure at the Pyramids of Egypt, but Santiago is having a hard time leaving his life he already knows behind. In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” Frost conveys that he was sorry that he “could not travel both / And be one traveler have gone on both roads, long I stood” (Frost 2-3). Frost had to make a decision in which road he was going to take in order to pursue his personal destiny. In The Alchemist Santiago had to choose between two roads like Frost, one road was grassy and the other was wear. Santiago’s two roads were his life of being

Each individual possesses a story with experiences so powerful that it has given them the opportunity to grow into a stronger person and uncover their true character.

In what can be seen as a “normal life,” positive and inspiring events or actions provide the motivation necessary for someone to desire a more purpose by moving on to college and beyond. Unfortunately, my drive comes from the death of someone who was near and dear to my heart, my great-grandmother Lina Varo. However, not all hope was lost because of her passing. Although it took time to see through such a wall of sadness and mourning, knowing the life she lived, including what she did in her younger days and her relationships with people, especially family, was comforting enough to where I could pull my bearings together and keep my composure in moving on in life. Reminiscent at times, thinking about how she used to call me her “big baby

My Mentor helps me understand myself and the calling upon my life by keeping me grounded in the Word through

The journey gives meaning to the destination, we all learn through our journeys in many different ways such through an sports team or just reaching common goals in life. With

To be content with destiny implies one has had control over their decisions regarding their life. A child, bred to undertake a future enforced by their influencers, will endure a life of dissatisfaction. Desire performs as a crucial aspect in the destined path for an individual; however, not everyone has the choice to resolve upon those desires. The word path, defined as the course or direction in which something is moving, connotes a series of complex meanings. The substantial factors influential to one’s path include freedom of education, guidance, and culture or tradition.