I Learned About Myself Because of You Essay

â€Å"In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don’t ever want me to say I’m great?† –Kanye West, Rolling Stone, 2006 In life, people often believe that things should come in golden wrappers and big packages. We want to reach the highest goals and our best dreams such that, we take great pains of effort to achieve those set objectives and goals. Self-centeredness is the name of the game and yet in the end, those who follow this mind-set end up frustrated and alone. Yes, almost everyone wants to be the king of the world; on top of the heap; in the time of our lives. Mediocrity and complacency have no place in our vocabulary as these are only for those without dreams. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with setting up your own goals, but the caveat is that you do not necessarily have to do it on your own. Indeed, the â€Å"self† is important in our being, but one must also consider how others view you or how others may contribute to one’s being. Remember that we are a social being; we live in co-existence with other people. Likewise, other people live in co-existence with us. Communication is the medium and we, ourselves, are the message. The poem, â€Å"Touching Bottom† teaches exactly this lesson in a quite clever and simple way. Julia Alvarez, the author of the poem, used the ubiquitous activity of hearing in our daily lives as the central act of learning more about ourselves and building up on our personality. â€Å"Sometimes the best advice comes randomly,† she says at the opening line of her poem. This shows how we must be open and sensitive to the tiniest details around us. Case in point: We have our goals, but we must become able receivers of messages from all around us. We must have the ability to transfer those random messages and transform them into systematic interaction for our future activities and/or events in life. After the opening line has aptly introduced the poem, the author then amusingly delivers simple thoughts that any ordinary person would have excused as mere â€Å"blah†: â€Å"Please hold through the silence,† the machine voice said, the best advice I’d ever come across for weathering writer’s block†¦ Words and phrases that seem to be the usual in one instance may be the best advice for another situation in our lives. It takes an effort of sensitivity for the â€Å"others† to be aware of the multitude of unsolicited advices and life lessons we can here at random. Self-centered people may have barred this flow communication from the very first instance. Psychology formally introduced this concept to us as the Johari’s Window. It states that there are several â€Å"windows† we can look to learn about ourselves for self-acknowledgement and self-recognition. To be quite simple about it, we learn about ourselves not just from the self-image we conceive about ourselves, but also how others view us. And most of the time, the inputs really matter most in changing our lives: And yet, I love how words can sound the world, how they can take you deep inside your life: you say something simple, and suddenly, the plank in reason breaks and down you drop – into a liberating train of thought. It takes a matter of humility to accept the things said to you and to transform those words into â€Å"a liberating train of thought.† And again, the self-centered person would have by-passed that train of thought because he is sensitive only to what he thinks, what he does, and what he may do in the future. So, do not let those precious moments of random, but caring, words and thoughts fly by you. The key is to have an open mind, and realize that we still have a lot to learn from even the most obscure person. We all just have to know where to place the words they say in our lives.