The Importance Of Life In My Life

I am a Bahamian citizen attempting to not only change my country but the world.

Life is like a game of volleyball, unpredictable yet predictable at the same time. The game of volleyball reflects the same ideas of what happens in my life. Thus, I created a setup of a volleyball game inside a shadow box to represent the parts of who I am. I made the volleyball net with white plastic canvas mesh, court lines with ribbon and players with some of my favorite pictures in the past. I chose this type of model because there are multiple sides to it. Only one side of it can be shown at a time but they are all there, this relates to how I present myself to others.

When I was younger I did not know much about life and playing football. A lot of the people that my family and I met throughout my life are because of football and how much I loved to play it. When people get older they usually decide to move around what they want to do in life. The main idols that are in my life currently aren’t anyone; they remain no one because, I would like to see what I would become in life and see where life would take me. A quote that I always remember when doing everything in life is “Keep moving forward no matter what you are doing”.

I believe anyone has the ability to change anyones mood. I believe one person can make me feel awful about myself. I believe one person has the power to fill me with joy, and laughter. I believe one person can ruin my day with just a couple awful words. I believe one person impacts another. At a young age I realized how much happiness one person brought me. When I was nine years old I then realized one person can also fill you with sadness.

Growing up my family has always been there to provide for me. Now, I am in college away from the nest but never far enough that I still cannot fly back home. A year or so after graduation, I expect to be living on my own, without the protective wing of my parents overshadowing me. In order for me to achieve this freedom, I will need a steady job and a place to live. Simple! However, for me to achieve a happy life on my own, I will need to do a lot more than just make a living. I could consider myself free from my parents if I lived under the freeway in a cardboard box; however, that life would not further my personal freedom to be happy. Achieving happiness and contentment in life is not easy; the steps taken to cultivate joy in my life that are found in the paragraphs below are going to be hard but worth it. I would like to be happy in the future by keeping my body in the best physical condition possible, working at a job that brings me joy, and loving a woman with all of my heart.

Life for me has always been making mistakes and learning from them. I’ve always been open to different experiences in life but I do have some boundaries. I know that everyone’s life in this world is different than every other person. I have been really close to my mom my whole life. I talk to her for hours and share my feeling, and tell her how my day goes. Whenever I had a problem, I knew that my mom would fix it for me, and once I tell her about it everything is going to be okay. I perpetually respect my parents and want to appreciate them for they do for me. I am really lucky that I have parents. Now as I became a teenager, I continuously thought that I would never change, my life would never change, I will always stay the same.

“There will always be a reason why you meet people. Either to change your life or theirs.” I believe that everyone comes into your life for a reason. It’s just our job to decide if it is a blessing or to teach us a lesson. My parents got divorced when I was only three years old and I was an only child, so when my dad and stepmom told me I was going to be an older sister at age eleven I wasn’t super excited. To be completely honest I was kind of upset and scared. I had always lived with my mom and only visited my dad every other weekend, so I figured I wouldn’t have to see her that much anyways which made it a little better. Having been an only child my whole life I had no idea what it would be like, especially since she would be so much younger than me.

from then on my path was set. I had made my decision, I would run. Throughout my childhood I was always the short one. I could not say I was not athletic, but you would not see my making plays and scoring goals. I was always hesitant, worried for all of their safeties, worried for my own safety. Needles to say football was not my sport, but we will come back to that. I played almost every sport I could think of, I played Basketball, I played Baseball, I played Soccer, I played football, and almost every track event that they let me in. sadly, I wasn’t very good at any of them.

“Thump-thump” was the sound of the beating of my uneasy heart as we drove out of my hometown of Novi, Michigan for one last time to go to the airport. I had lived there all of my life. As I glanced out the window, I saw my elementary school, the park, and the homes of my friends that I would visit nearly everyday. They all became a blurry scene that passed by me at the speed of light. Tears nearly flew through my eyes, but I refused to blink because I didn't want to miss this precious moment. Even though I always preferred the familiarity of an environment and had built a great relationship with all of my teachers, I understood that moving to Dallas was inevitable and was more beneficial for our family in the long-term. Despite this, thoughts of uneasiness clouded my mind. Little did I know that moving to a new town, a new state, would change me in a way I would have never anticipated.

I have always preferred to show up early to events. This trend seemingly began as I was born prematurely at 32 weeks, a tribulation that nearly took both me and my mother's life. Unlike most newborns, I spent the first few hours of life in a neonatal intensive care unit as doctors rushed to mend my collapsed lung. Although I was not as big as expected and I came partially broken, my three siblings sat in the hospital waiting room with my father, eager to get their small, stubby fingers around their early gift of a little brother. I came into this world similar to an unripened fruit, but fortunately I sprouted in an exceptional community with the most valuable mentors.

In life, we tend to try to please people and make them as happy as possible even though we sacrifice the things that truly make us happy. I, like many others in the world, have experienced many occasions where I have sacrificed my own happiness just to make other people happy, or just to see them smile a genuine smile. No one else can make you happy in your life. Intimate relationships and friendship will often offer temporary sanctuary from things like your fears, insecurities, and past experiences that weren’t particularly positive, but if we want to get over these things we must face them all alone.

My life is sort of like a book, it should not be judged by its cover. Most of my peers perceive that everything in my life is sailing smoothly but boy were they wrong. While faking my well being was not in my best interest, I did it anyways. But because I lived up to the joyful girl I made myself to be people did not get to know who I truly am. Certainly life has been a struggle but slowly I am tearing down the walls I have built to protect myself because it is what I deserve.

AN: I really wanted to take part in this contest, I edited what I could but I doubt, I'll get past the first round, but I hope to make it to 2k words at least!

Crouched under a mango tree trying to find shade from the scorching sun as sweat drips from my head to my feet, sizzling as it hits the ground. The temperature rises day by day in the summer I pray for rain to fall, looking at the stray animals on the streets in thirst for water. I stare off into the distance of barren acres of land, touching the dry, cracked soil and seeing lifeless crops die due to the boiling heat that I needed to take care of. As a boy living in the rural areas of India in a middle-class family, everyone in the village was taught at a young age to start working. Even though, I was the third child out of my four sibling it didn’t stop my parents from making me work out in the fields. It was tough having to do manual labor like doing field work to feeding and taking care of the animals every day. As the roosters crow I wake up immediately and lay out my school uniform and shower, I comb my hair slicked back, put on my shoes and run off to school with my friends. I stopped going to school until the 10th grade because back in the day my parents wouldn't care that much about education like today. It was more about harvesting corn in the summer to plant seeds in the winter. When I was around 20 years old my two older siblings got married and my family decided it was my turn. But my father tried to help me do something in life first and not sit at home and drink or smoke so he opened a pharmacy, but that didn't work out so long due to my obsession with alcohol and just being lazy which stopped the business from lasting and I continued to do nothing.

In life we are given lessons such as to “Never give up” or “Be yourself,” A life lesson that I will neer forget is we are not going to get eveything we want in life. We are not always going to get the job, our crush, or the spot on a varsity team. Yes, it’s going to hurt because we want it so bad, that we give it our all, but at the it wasn’t meant to be. Everything happens for a reason and maybe not getting that one thing in life, brings you something so much more bigger in life.