beauty

Alice walker is an African American author, and an award winning writer, whining the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. In her somewhat of a self biography,“Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”. Alice recalls her past remember how amazing her childhood was, saying how she was the most beautiful put of all her family and was beloved by her father for it. Yet all of that changed when she was accidentally blinded, when she was shot in eye by a BB gun. The rest of the story teaches an audience an very important lesson of self love and respect. She explains that is shouldn't matter how everyone else views you, but how you view yourself, that you should love yourself and be happy, instead about worrying about what everyone else believes. I totally agree with this message, are whole lives we are made to see that there is one way to seen as beautiful, but the truth is all those build boards and commercials, are a load of crap. Beauty is from within, we are and beautiful as we believe we are, and we can't let anyone take that away from us. After that accident Alice lost all her light and let darkness take her life, she fell in a depression, seeing her self as not beautiful. Yet after some time and some help fro her brother, Alice learned that her beauty came from what she believed and not from anyone else, and she never stopped teaching that lesson.

Alice Walker is an African-American award winning writer from Georgia whose works include The Color Purple. In her essay "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self" she retells events from her past that shape her self image. Growing up she was very confident in herself exclaiming that her father would choose her to go to the fair because she was the prettiest of her eight siblings. Her self-confidence changed however when she was shot in the eye with a BB gun. Her eye was blinded and left scarred and often wandered. She never raised her head as long as the scar was on her eye. She became self-conscious. Only at the end of the story does she realize that her outward appearance has no effect on who she is inside. I agree that who you are inside stays the same, it is not based on outward appearance. It took her many years to realize this, but her appearance never changed who she was inside. Her inner self was always there, just disconnected because of her self-doubt.

"Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self"

Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African-American novelist and poet that is most famous for authoring the well-known story, The Color Purple. Alice Walker’s novel “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” she revisits her past and speaks about an event that happened in her childhood that would shape her future. She teaches her audience that they should accept themselves for who they are, and the only way to truly accept one’s self is to accept yourself from the inside out. I completely agree with this concept, even though it’s possibly one of the hardest things someone can do. To be able to accept yourself and not be afraid of standing out from everyone else would lead to a happiness that is unlike any other. To stand out from the traditional standards of beauty and be completely happy with who you are as an individual is to become truly brave.

In Alice Walker’s story, she begins writing about how as a young girl, she was confident in herself and everything she did, but after the BB incident with her brothers, she is left feeling lost and insecure. Her social and academic life have been severely affected by the accident. Alice Walker couldn’t accept herself for who she was now, and this had negative side-affects to her mentality. Whenever her closest brother helped her out by taking her to a doctor to remove some of what was left in her eye from the accident, she blossomed again. She became more confident and even found a person to love and begin a family with. She had begun the journey to finding self-acceptance, but she hadn’t fully come to terms with who she was until one night her daughter looked her in her bad eye and told her how she held the world in her eye. Her daughter didn’t see a flaw, but instead she saw something wonderful and something to be celebrated. Alice Walker’s daughter helped her come to accept herself fully, blind eye and all. This manifested itself as a dream of Alice dancing with herself, finally at peace with what happened to her and completely content with her life. She has found peace with herself and has found the confidence that she had last all those years ago after the life-changing accident.

Selfless Dancing - Caronina Reyes

Alice Walker is an African American writer, she describes herself as a ‘scandalous writer’ who often writes on self acceptance, romance and bildungsroman. In her novel “Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self” she teaches her readers that self acceptance occurs both internally and externally. I agree with Walker’s lesson because she sends a message to her readers, men, women, children, teens and everything in between, that the idea of self-acceptance is much greater than trying to conform with the rest of the world’s standards of beauty. Instead, we should be able to learn to accept who we are, both mentally/ emotionally and physically.
In the story, young Alice Walker does not realize this lesson of full self acceptance till the end when she is dreaming of dancing with herself and she realizes that as a woman and a human being, she has come through alright. This dream symbolizes her old self binding with her new self as they both come to a true epiphany that being “beautiful” does not actually define a person. It also explains that the definition of beauty is not essential in order to feel genuinely happy in one’s life. The message she conveys in the ending also helps her readers understand her message of self acceptance and selfhood. Selfhood is defined as “the state of having an individual identity.” Throughout the story, Alice feels like she is having trouble finding this individual identity and accepting it, however, she does not realize that throughout the whole entire story, she is an individual. She just can’t accept that she is different and that she is still beautiful. But by the end of the story she comes to peace with her outer features, flaws included, and finds peace with her internal ones, such as confidence, self-worth, self-esteem and happiness.

Me not We

The mind is such an intricate organ and it processes our thoughts in individualized way, which is why I believe that we think as ourselves as a singular being and not a collective.  Bloom describes the mind as having a multitude of identities, for example "There is no inconsistency between someone’s anxiously hiking through the Amazon wishing she were home in a warm bath and, weeks later, feeling good about being the sort of adventurous soul who goes into the rain forest. In an important sense, the person in the Amazon is not the same person as the one back home safely recalling the experience." (Bloom) This claim is like saying that each phase change that we go through in our mind is a different side of ourselves, and that we only can really experience one state of mind at a time depending on the circumstances we are in, unless you have dissociative identity disorder. My thoughts are we have a singular consciousness. The lady in the amazon has one consciousness but is simply thinking back on her past experiences. Of course the woman is going to wish she was home but thats because she is in an uncomfortable place and misses simple comforts she is used to , not due to another side of her mind that comes out after an adventure. The consciousness may seem to be divided at times like making a difficult decision, the devil and angle on their respective perches, but in the end they are consolidated into that singular entity, you.

First Person Plural

Each one of us contains a multitude of selves. I believe that I myself contain a multitude of many "me's" that each have their own place when needed. In "First Person Plural" it stated, "The notion of different selves within a single person is not new."  Philosophers like Plato and David Hume both believed this to be true . Walt Whitman  gave us an easier version to understand than that of David Hume's explanation. Walt Whitman said, "I am  large, I contain multitudes."  I can say that I agree to this on some level I do have moments where I feel like there are many versions of myself. I can be a quiet person who likes to stay in the shadows, but I can also be a person who loves being in the spot light. I'm not saying that I totally change into a different person just that there are different parts of myselves that only a few people know about or get to see. I have different personalities that are good when a situation arises and I need to conform to that situation. We as humans are always needing to conform to our surroundings and new things that arise. I am not saying that I have split personalities or anything just that there are times when I feel the need to be different than who I am currently being. There's nothing wrong with wanting to try out something new whether it be a new wardrobe or a new personality. I am still me but there are times in my life where I want to be a little different and try something new. I remember one time after a swim meet I was so exhausted but I knew I had so many things that I needed to do that I could have done right then and rested a lot longer the next morning but instead of doing the work right then and there. I decided to just do it the next day. The next day came and I had forgotten that I was supposed to help some relatives move into their new house. By the time I finished helping my relatives move into their new house it was late and I was exhausted. I did my assignments that night and turned them in the next day and I was surprised that I didn't get as good a grade as I ususally did. I blamed the lazy part of me that could have gotten the work done much earlier and have gotten a better grade on it for not getting the work done at an earlier time. So I do believe that there are multitudes or plurals of ourselves and that they each have there own moments where they come out and make themselves known to us.  We as humans have many different parts of us that only a few lucky people get to see.

My Brain

We now know how the human brain works and how different and separate the two hemispheres are. Jill Bolte Taylor describes the right hemisphere as “all about this present moment. It's all about "right here, right now." Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies.” And the left hemisphere as thinking “linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it's all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we've ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities.” Bolte also states that it thinks in language. Jill Bolte Taylor brought up a few interesting questions of which hemisphere would you choose? Which DO you choose? And when? I believe it is very important to take into account the way she describes the dramatic differences in the two sides of the brain when answering her such thought provoking questions. Though I naturally over think every little thing in life I have recently learned to start letting go, and would rather let my right hemisphere take over in this situation. Bliss and happiness comes from living in the present moment, from a certain unison feeling of ourselves and the rest of the earth around us, thinking us all as one. She is right in saying that the right hemisphere and understanding it is what will make the world a better and much calmer place. Yet, I know I can’t stop the left hemisphere from analyzing every situation. Personally, I have a default to relate everything and everyone to a past experience and worst case scenario, leading me to have a lot of paranoia and trust issues. This usually happens worse when I am in a new situation as in meeting new people, a new relationship, in a new place for the first time, etc. Though one can argue that yes, the left hemisphere can be useful in planning your future and thinking rationally, to me it seems more trouble than it’s worth when one could reach bliss in every present moment with the left side of the brain on a metaphorical mute button.

MY LIFE. MY CHOICE (Team Yeti)

   Ever wondered what it is like to be absolutely free from within? What it is like to be completely at peace without being bothered about past experiences and emotions or what the future holds? How it feels to just live in the present, ignoring every negative vibe. Do you often believe you can make this happen but there is a huge restriction in your path to finding peace, maybe because of the fast pace in which life moves, fear of failure or judgement from others.
   Jill Bolte Taylor's three thought provoking questions: Which hemisphere would you choose? Which do you choose and when? all depends on who we are as individuals. I personally would choose the right hemisphere which from her description is called "lala land"." An energy being connected to all the energy around me". This decision is based on the fact that to obtain peace, you just have to live in the present, thinking about the past and even while living the present  trying to figure what the future holds isn't gonna bring peace into one's life. It brings about a connection between ourselves and nature. It enables us appreciate what we have at the moment, see life as a beautiful and perfect place.
    What I have always been choosing and what I'm still choosing is the left hemisphere because it is quite inevitable because we humans are bound to make every decision based on the past and everything we even do in the present is projected towards the future. It is pretty hard to just living the present. I once watched a movie and in it a guy who was so into taking amazing photos of nature climbed a lot of mountains in the winter. It literally took him 3 weeks to finally get to the top and he waited for days until a special breed of cat came out with his camera and all his equipment set up in front of him.eventually did but he didn't take a picture of it. He changed his mind because of how beautiful and magnificent the scene was and what he said was" sometimes you don't have to take a picture of every experience. You just got to live in it and let it sink in".
  Finally for the last question, When would I choose what hemisphere or what way of life to live? My answer would obviously be the right but realistically I know for a fact that would be quite impossible for me to live every day of my life. I am human and I am bound to think about the past and future more than I do of the present.