In our lives are we really individuals or are we attached to other people who are around us?
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| individuality |
I actually think that I’m an individual person. I think of that because I can manage myself by myself. I don’t need to be overhauled by anyone including my parents. My father actually has helped me to become a real individual. His actions have rasped my personality and built my character. He helped me to become the person that I’m at the moment.
I have been in New York for a week and a half and I’ve seen various people on the streets that are individuals. They have their self-confidence so they don’t care about the people around them and what the people around them think about them. They are mostly all by themselves without feeling to be attached to any other person. These people on the streets were mainly adults; I haven’t seen any teenagers by themselves.
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| self-confidence |
I think that being individual is a yield of age. As people grow up and become more mature, they earn their self- confidence and they start to think and act as individuals. I reached the maturity for individuality when I was at the age of 12. I was sent to a summer school for 4 weeks in the UK, which built my self-confidence. I had the experience of being all by myself at a really early age. Most of my friends have been going to summer schools since 2 years so because of that they have matured to be individuals at a later than I did. In a different way I feel way comfortable when I’m all by myself. It’s mainly because I see that I can manage my stuff and life also I can take care of myself. I have learned to take responsibility.
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| Being a "World Citizen" |
I’m in the summer program abroad again for the 5th. Because there are lots of people around different lieu of the world I have been seeing a lot of different kinds of teenagers just like me. There are about 1600 teenagers and I know about only 100 of them. Because it is a school in the city, people go directly to downtown after their courses. As I walk in the campus I take a glimpse at the people who passes me and goes to their classes and I actually think none of them are "individual"s. In terms of individual I’m not meaning being anti-social. There is a thin line in between these two terms, at least from my point of view.
People who are in this summer program are like colonies. People go and hang around with the people who are from their culture or their country. They feel as foreigners if they try to get attached to a person who is from another country. I actually hang out with the people from Florida, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Spain, and Guatemala etc. I don’t feel like a foreigner when I’m with them. My father has always told me to be individual and he wanted me to be a “World Citizen”. In terms of that, he wanted me to be able to live and work in any rubric of the World. So I listened to his advice and I tried to hang out with the people who are not from my district. It actually worked well and now I can communicate with all of them. I learned a bit of their culture, their approach to life and also I learned new facts about places in the world that I have not been to. So I guess being with other people rather then your friends and making the “other people” your friends is being individual.
What I see in the campus is colonies of people who are from the same country or from the same social network. People do not have the courage of being alone or by themselves, nobody can eat alone at the cafeteria or nobody can go for a walk by him or her self. Nobody can attend excursions without being attached to some another person.
I as a teenager think that it’s something not very desirable to still not being an individual. At the moment I’m 17 years old and in a short time I will be leaving my friends and my family behind to study in some part of the US. I’m aware of that I must take my responsibilities by myself to be an individual and I must not be attached to another person so intensely. Because nothing or nobody is permanent in this short time period named as “life”. I know a person who is attached so strongly to her mother and I actually think that’s the most wrong thing to do. Actually the girl is trying to be individual and wants to become individual but her mother is a control freak and so wants her to be in control of herself. This girl is a teenager who is 17 and still has never been to some place all by herself. Her mother treats her, as she is a baby. She doesn’t let the girl become an individual. I have no right to comment on people’s way of raising children but from my point of view and by how I was raised it is something really wrong. I think everybody should have the opportunity of being alone and everybody at least should experience what is to be alone and individual at an early age.
I would love to read your comments on my "Individuality" blog.
As I'm a non native speaker of English, please also feel free to comment on my grammar-spelling-vocabulary :)
terms. People usually have misconceptions about these two different ideas. Actually these terms are total opposites of each other. “Respect” is a term depending on other people’s thoughts and their approach. But as it can obviously be seen “self-respect” is something that’s about the thoughts and approach of a person to his or her self. As a result, self-respect and respect are complete opposites, similar to the concept of “individual vs. society.”
Being respectful to yourself starts with being honest to yourself. I believe honesty is one of the most important character traits. Honesty brings reliability and reliability brings trust when you are interacting with other people. Accepting one’s own faults is something that can be defined as divine. Only people who have self-respect can accept their own faults. People who have bad reputation, otherwise known as people who are notorious can also have self-respect, meaning, even convicts, gangsters and mafias can have self-respect. As long as one accepts his or her own fault, they can be considered having self-respect.
others in their ward. As a matter of fact, they are obsessed with the term “respect”. They can have bad reputation, but, at the end of the day, they are still very much honest to themselves and they accept their faults, in order to be respected by others in the community they belong to.
I can say that I have self-respect without any hesitation. I’m generally honest to myself. By “generally” I mean as long as I am okay with the situation or the consequences. I believe, and know, that being honest about something is the first
