Finan essay

 What is I?            Human life is built up in such a way that a person cannot avoid contact with the environment which surrounds him or her. Life is made of a daily chaos of diverse events. I define my life as the state of my inside and outside worlds. The freshness of the morning sunrise with crossing yellow and orange tints gives me the power to begin a new day and its incredible adventures. The whole day I engage in different issues. For me, evening is the time of relaxation and of rest. I spend it with my friends and family. At night, I am in an amazing state of mind and I consider my life and the events that took place during the day. Some of them I try to overcome, others I enjoy, and I just accept those that remain. My pessimistic young heart makes me hesitate with any new episode that occurs in my life. Still, every new day is a new experience that consists of meeting and communicating with different people. I like my life and everything that is involved with it. My friends, my family, and my development are all a part of my life. I wondered what would happen if all of them would disappear? That seems a strange question for me since it is impossible to imagine. If the people in my life were not here, I would not be here either.  It would mean that there would be no “I” in the world. So, what is “I”? First time in the class of College writing I answered to this question simply : “ I is a whole World which includes my conscious and unconscious, perception, memories, dreams, my past and my present and of course my body.” After 4 months of exploring my senses through my experience and my inside World, I still agree with this definition. Yet the list of meaning of my “I” had amplified as the result of revelation of new sides of my temperament about which I did not suspect before. “I” is my life and every detail in it. My life is the sum of the day-to-day actions that happen around me.  “I” is an enormous idea that has an endless list of characteristics. Yet the main thought of “I” is held in each element that surrounds me. “I” is my parents, my friends, my feelings, my experiences, my daily actions, my weaknesses and strengths, my religion and beliefs, my senses, my soul, my inside and outside state,  and many other things I can not even begin to list.  Moreover, any occurrence automatically becomes my “I”. So, there is no particular definition for “I” because it is indefinable and endless. It amplifies every day by every new experience.             In spite of the fact that my “I” evolves every day, it has a list of attributes that are inseparable. The most important part of my “I” is my parents and my home. My parents are my life. They are my flesh and blood, and an important part of who “I” am. Their presence leads to my success.  My “I” is not sufficient without them. Sometimes, I even think that I am not mature enough to be without them. I recognize that I am still a small kid that needs to be attended to. Their support and belief in me is key to my life. My essay about the sense of smell tells a lot about my feeling to my Mom. “When I miss my Mom I take some of her clothes to smell. In that moment, when I smell her cloths, I think that she is near me and my bad mood disappears quickly. Even in the US, when my family is thousands of kilometers away, I feel their presence through their smell. That helps me stay on my feet.”   I am using the expression “helps to stay on leg” to show in full strength the feelings that I do feel to my Mom. Her encouragement is so influential for me that I almost completely depend on her opinion on issues of my daily life. Along with the inseparable attributes that define my “I”, memories also play an important role. Thus, memories become another significant layer of my “I”. “I” is my memories that can make me either happy or sad. As any future is impossible without past, my “I” does not exist without my memories.  The way I live is linked to events that happened to me in the past. I learn every hour, every minute, and every second. My mind distinguishes the bad and good sides by memorizing. I can do something wrong, but it will help me do something better in the future. Whether good or bad, all of my memories play a part in defining my “I”. It is part of me and therefore it is my “I”. For example, I hate coffee. This is not the case because is bad, it is only bad memories that have created the idea that coffee is not good. My essay on the sense of smell I cited the example of how my childhood attitude to coffee is still influence my present. The bad memory about the taste of “divine beverage” like coffee does not allow trying it even in present time. “In childhood I drank so much coffee that I can still remember its taste and smell. I will remember the taste of that coffee for all of my life. Even though 14 years have passed, I still cannot drink or smell coffee because I drank so much on that night.”  So, my past has an impact on my present and future. My past determines my present, and my present defines my “I”.             “I” is also my beliefs and thoughts. They express my inner world. My inner world is full of amazing ideas and incredible fictions.  I emphasis a lot of attention in my blog entry about features of my inside and outside worlds that seem so significant to me:     “My outer world is how people perceive me. But nobody can ever see my inner world, that is why nobody can know me better than I know myself.” At times, it seems to me that I do not even know myself. My habit of changing everything at the last minute scares me. I really do not know what to expect from myself. My inner world has the same importance as my outer world. In fact, I live more with my inner world because the consequences of my actions are the result of my thoughts.            Along with its definition of who I am, “I” is my strengths and weaknesses. The strengths are the way I achieve success in life. It is what makes me who I am right now. Regardless of the fact that my weaknesses are my susceptibility, they still have their own charm in my personality.  My biggest weakness is trust everyone. Still, it makes my individuality different from that of others.  The distinguishing features of my strengths and weaknesses forms my “I,” since they define my goals and success in life. Development, physically and mentally, is also my “I.” Thus, “I” can become abroad concept because of the knowledge that I gain through new research. My “I” is unanswered questions like “What is reality?” My response to the question is: “Nobody knows.” Nobody knows and I am not an exception to that list.  This is the way that my mind reasons. It leads me to a new part of my “I,” my mind. I am very happy by the fact that people cannot read each other’s thoughts.  Otherwise, the essential “I” would disappear in an instant.  The way my mind thinks and makes decisions is different from the way my classmates think, for instance. It distinguishes me from them. Hence, it defines my “I.”             “I” is each of my senses, though each sense describes my “I” in its own way. What about the sense of vision? In an essay dedicated to the topic I used an example from my own personal experience. I discussed vision and the way it shows me diverse people, sometimes in an erroneous manner. To emphasize my point of view I used proofs from my personal experience about the way I made acquaintance with my best friend Adam, who is part of my present life.             “My best friend now was the person whom I almost hated before. My best friend Adam is a very fascinating personality. You cannot even understand is he happy or irritated, does he agree or disagree with you and so on. We were introduced to each other by one of my classmates. When my classmate named me the first time when I saw Adam, he just nodded and said nothing in response. The first my impression was a ‘rude fellow’.”Moreover, my vision gives me an opportunity to make my “I” more vivid. As said above, “I” is the world around me, my vision makes this world more extensive. “I” can see the actions around it and respond to them. Vision is a great power that allows me to see my friends, my parents, my new days, and my achievements that are an inseparable part of “I.” The sense of taste, in its turn, expresses “I” through the description of my favorite food. In the essay “The favorite flavor” I explained the significance of flavors for diverse people:  “The word flavor is a strictly individual notion. Someone likes products with a bitter or sweet flavor, someone gives preference to sour products, and so on.” Specific flavors demonstrate my “I” in a special way. I like the taste of products that many people consider uneatable. For example, my attitude toward lemons is very different from that of most people.  I enjoy eating lemons raw, they help me to overcome problems. Bad mood, stress, and fatigue fly away when I eat a lemon. I wrote about this tropical fruit the next:   “I have a favorite flavor with which I indulge myself. Why do I enjoy it? From the beginning I felt a burst of energy after eating it. I feel that I am eating something strong in taste. First, I feel it only in my mouth, but then it goes to all parts of my body even to my mind.  Its unique taste, which is not desired by most, is able to distract me from any problem at hand . In the process of eating you feel a burning on your tongue! That gives you great pleasure! Thus, eating lemon brings me a mass of EMOTIONS!” Consequently, my sense of taste makes me extraordinary from others too, as one of the inseparable parts of my “I.”Bitter lemon is my favorite flavor that makes me extraordinary from other people surrounding me. Consequently, sense of taste describes my “I” in unique way.             Simultaneously, the sense of smell in my “I” plays the role of a distinguishing tool. My sense of smell opens a new feature of my character. The possibility of loving people by smell would seem to me odd. Yet my sense of smell plays this exact action. It creates the world of smells of close people whom I appreciate so much. Their smell brings a lot of emotions which are dear to my heart. The paper about the sense of smell let me to know how the sense of smell plays an exceptional tool in my life that in turn facilitates my staying out of home, and defines the attitude to diverse people around me. I wrote in my previous work about the sense of smell: “All my friends, parents, and sisters have their own smell with which I distinguish them from other people.” I like people by their smell. A new smell is a new entry in my “I.” Thus, “I” is the world around me. Yet the smell around me is the aroma of this world that makes it special.             “I” is my ability to touch too. I appreciate the sense of touch that helps me to feel and to undergo any new event in life. My intimate friends and relatives are my outer world. Hence, their touch assists to live and to feel loved. As I said before, my intimate people are apart of my “I.” Therefore, their touch is proof of love. Love, in turn, is a supportive tool of “I,” which leads it to exist. “The kiss, hug, or cuddle from parents was the way I felt secure and loved… Touch can describe love without words. I can say no words, still I can kiss my lover when I am going outside and coming home to show my concern about him.” I feel people through touch, and through touch I define my “I.”  Most of all I appreciate the sense of touch as I cannot imagine my life without relationship. In my essay I defined the touch as the inseparable part of any kind of relationship:“Could there be any kind of relationship without touch? It is a debatable question. Still, I can surely admit that despite different personalities, a person shows his/her love by touching those whom he/she cares about. It could be in the form of hugging, holding and stroking. I believe that close relationships are not possible without touch.”I can assume from these words that my “I” is dependable creature. It completely depends on touches in relationship that cannot conceive the relationship without a touch. Hence a touchy feeling is also big layer of my essential “I.’’             The sense of hearing is the way I listen to my world. The ability to hear is the way “I” perceives everything around it. Through the opportunity to hear, I can listen to every rustle and vibration near me. “The indispensable aspect of music is that different people perceive it differently. Also depending on age, educational background and so-called emotional sensitivity people may prefer particular genres of music”, I wrote on my paper about music.  So, music is the way how I can I express my “I” in special and exclusive way from others. Since individuals have diverse tastes on music, they express their “I” in different ways. Music also develops my “I” and makes it happier by relaxation. I paid a lot of attention in my work about music how do I spend my exhausted evenings: “It is indescribably pleasant to listen to the playing of a Spanish guitar or piano after a long, nerve-racking day. I am letting music take away my emotional experience and tiredness that accumulated through the whole day. Music helps to live colorfully and excitingly. It makes the life happier.”  Thus, “I” is the music that I listen to and the events that I hear. In addition, my “I” becomes happier by the fact of listening the music. I told before that partly my cheerfulness depends on music on work place.“I work in the dining hall and it is not the most pleasant place to work. The last hours of the working day on the service line, as if intentionally, pass so slowly that I think they would never finish. In contrast, the time of work at the ice cream station simply flies away. The difference between them is that the work in the ice cream station is accompanied with music and, consequently, I enjoy being there.”“I” is a whole big world that contains each detail in my life. Everything that occurs in my life is my “I.”  My every sense is part of my “I.” Each sense differently reflects my “I,” but each of them is something significant for me. I feel people with my sense of touch. I listen to them with my sense of hearing. I see the people with sense of vision. I use my sense of taste every day. The way I live and my whole life is my “I.” This list continues endlessly. Consequently, there is no way to define each detail of my “I,” since it changes every day. The college writing class helped me to learn many features of my character that I did not know before. Moreover, the reading of different articles helped to overcome many prejudices about my personality in which I was sure. I was sure only 4 months ago that I am complete egoistic person who does not rely on anyone. It seemed me that I am undependable individual that does not need anyone to be near and can make myself happy by myself. In the process of writing quick responses to such questions like: “What I would do in last minute of my life?” and “What can happen if I would loose one of my senses?” I changed even my opinion to many things. I understood that my “I” is nothing by itself. It is like emptiness. I imagined the possibility of loosing the ability to hear or to touch my lovely mother whose presence I like so much. I really was scared. This class helped me to get rid of egoistic way of thinking. I changed. I like this fact. Now I appreciate more than ever my life, my parents, my friends, my senses that seemed as obligation to be present in everyone, and everything around me. The possibility to loose all this was like death for my “I’’. I like my life and everything around me because all of that is part of me and my humble “I”.               1. I am not sure about my introduction part.2. Do I need to make conclusion in different way?3 . Does it overall seem like Autoethnography? 4. Do I need to make more reference to essays that I had written before?5. I am not certain that I described in proper way my “I” from point of senses.