Jun 6, 2009

An Essay By My Daughter....



Who I Am and What I Value


To help describe who I am and what exactly I value, I chose a specific piece of art. The artwork I have chosen is a statue of a woman. This female appears to be sculpted out of stone, the type of stone is unclear to me. The woman is pregnant, her swollen belly has the image of a globe for skin. Her hair is significantly lengthy and is adorned by butterflies and golden spiders. The look represented on the face is one of contentment and joy, love and possibly pride. The stone skin is covered in cave like marks, which seem to be random in placement. This statue very simply represents my most important values that make up who I am. They are family, education and compassion.

The very first glance at this piece of artwork screams family. The statue is undeniably pregnant, and enjoying it greatly. The image of the earth and the markings on the skin sends the message that the mother is very connected to bringing a child into the world. The markings on her leg make me feel it is also important for her to teach the child to live in the world. This is a very important task. Family is the most important value to me personally for many reasons. First of all family is an individuals beginning to instruction of life. Family is the support system where each individual learns from each other, from each person's mistakes.

This support system is always there for you. From family a child learns to socialize and how to emerge into the world once ready. Having many individuals together all the time forces socialization. This effectively teaches one how to handle many different real world situations properly. It is important to learn social skills in order to function in society, if nobody learned to socialize we would have no society. I myself have two children, this increases the value of family to me. I value the fact that I need to teach my girls to be a productive member of society, and I take this seriously.

My family is part of what makes me who I am. My life revolves around making sure my family can properly function and succeed in society.Another image quickly evident to the eye is the globe that is the pregnant belly. Immediately one thinks of education, or knowing the world inside and out. I believe education is as important as food and shelter. This is because knowledge or education is the means of obtaining power, controlling your destiny and achieving what you want out of life. In the society of today you need education to achieve an admirable and enjoyable yet profitable career. Education equips a person with the ability to achieve their dreams.

It is education that builds in every individual, the confidence to take decisions, to face life and to accept successes and failures, and move forward. This is an important value because I would like to be a nurse in the future. As a nurse every year you need to renew your education and keep up with constantly changing medical technology. Also learning is extremely fun to me, I like to think of myself as an intelligent person and pride myself upon that. I plan to instill a great education in my children in order for them to be able to achieve all their dreams and goals. Education opens so many doors, while ignorance closes many. I want the world to open to my children and I ,therefore it is important to me that my family has all the means necessary to make life what they desire. This leads to my final value which is compassion.

The look on the pregnant woman’s face is one of extreme compassion and love for her child. The look on her face is what instantly drew me in to the piece of art and ultimately lead to using it as my medium for this essay. I feel compassion is an important value to have because it gives a person a desire to help those who are suffering. This is also an important trait to being a nurse, mother, wife or productive member of society. Compassion requires a “do unto others” mentality, which I believe benefits society greatly. If more people cared about one another society might run more smoothly. The reason I value this so much is because compassion makes me who I am.

Everything I do in life, and enjoy doing involves compassion. Raising my two children requires so much compassion, in order to understand how they are feeling and parent accordingly. It makes me a better mother to be able to feel for my children and have the desire to help in any way possible. There is nothing in life that gives me as much satisfaction.

Another important part of who I am that requires compassion is a health care worker. With my desire to become a nurse a great deal of compassion is needed to be excellent in my career. I cant stand to see people suffering and want to do everything I can to make them more comfortable. Having compassion allows me to empower my children or residents to regulate their emotions and behaviors to function better in society. I want to help everyone I possibly can, I feel for those in less fortunate situations, and I absolutely love every minute of it.

Compassion makes me a better person, able to effectively function in society, trying to improve the overall experience of life. All three of these values are very important to me. I live my life with these values on the forefront, I practice them everyday. In the end my values are what makes me who I am. They develop my identity, if you take any of these away from me I become a completely different person.


"Wow!"... I thought, "This is MY child that wrote this!" this!

2 comments:

clairedulalune said...

liz, what a beautiful post! We need compassion around, and without poeple like you, I don't what the likes of me would do! I adore your statue, it is as you say compassion itself! Lovely reading!

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Your daughter is obviously a very thoughtful and mature young woman! Great essay!