A Snapshot of My Belief Structure

Essay 15: Faith Before I begin, I am immensely proud to say that this is my second-to-last essay for this book. Thank you so much for reading until this point. This was life-changing to write, and if the slightest percentage of that impact came across, then I’m the happiest person in the world. I am quite Jewish, and this essay will be molded by that, but don’t let the language stop you from appreciating what I am attempting to say. Wrestle with these words, use your discretion to find what is of value, and think on it deeply. This will not be an exhaustive or structured essay, but I will still do my best to get the main points across. In Essay 1, I mentioned Contribution and growth as the needs we have inherent within us from birth, but we struggle to realize them until we mature. I can finally revisit it and do so quickly. Contribution is love, growth is reason. The self-othering experience of loving sacrifice is something our nature calls upon us to do, and that calling is cont...

Essay 14: Reason A father and son are in a room; the room being the son’s room, and it is a mess. The stuffed animals are strewn about on the floor, wrappers are lying on random surfaces, and controllers and figurines lie in front of the TV. The boy’s desk had many pencils on them: some colored, some mechanical, etc. Scraps from the pencils that were sharpened mostly made it into the trash can but an amount that could hardly be called insignificant missed and now lie on the floor. Notebooks were still open on that desk, and next to them sheets of printer paper; some were drawn on, others were not even used yet. You could tell the son liked basketball. Not because there was a hoop in the room or any merchandise, but because crumpled balls of paper and laundry lay around the trash can laundry basket. No one ever said you had to be good at something to like it. There were other weird things too: the alarm clock was facing in a direction that had the screen pointed away from the bed; the...