Skip to main content

11-13-2021

 Today, I am unsure on what I should write about. Perhaps I shall write about the weather outside. Right now, at 9:56 AM on this lazy Saturday, clouds roll gently over the sky. The clouds on the right are as white as cotton, while a large gray mass pushes them aside. The day reminds you of an average autumn day: the wind gently swaying branches back and forth, leaves littered on the floor, and cars passing on the road ahead. The day seems calm and carefree now, but I know that the day will soon intensify as time goes on. I have lots of homework that needs to be finished, yet I have such little time.  I cannot spend much of my time to enjoy this pleasant autumn day. It reminds me of the day after Gatsby's heated argument with Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. The day started off with "gray-turning, gold-turning light," with "ghostly birds" singing among the "blue leaves" of the trees. Contrasted with the heat and the constricting feeling of the day before, it was oddly peaceful. Of course, this peacefulness did not last for very long. The day, of course, remained the same, but Nick's perception of the day shifted. Nick imagined his friend Gatsby looking at "an unfamiliar sky through frighting leaves," while being pursued by an "ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees." Just before you know it, Gatsby ends up dead. Of course, I do not predict that my day will ends up as awfully as Gatsby's did (at least, I hope it doesn't), but I do know that as I begin to embroil myself in my work, my perception of the today was change as well. The cars that are now meandering down the road will soon be marching hurriedly. The leaves blanketing over the ground will soon be choking it. The lazy clouds will soon be stormy. 


What I'm trying to say is that our perception of an object or an event is influenced by our mood, not the other way around. For example, take a rainy day. Many seem to associate rainy days with sadness or boredom. However, the same exact scenario may be processed differently by another person. Maybe they associate it with snuggling up and reading a good book. Maybe they associate it with playing a board game next to the comfort of the fireplace. Maybe they even associate it with taking a nice nap while being sprawled out on the couch. The point is, the day is shaped by how we choose to see it. I can either let my work get to me and miss out on such a wonderful day, or I can appreciate the beautiful fall colors that only come around two months each year. As my principal in sixth grade said, "make it a great day or not, the choice is yours." 

Comments

  1. JefferyNovember 13, 2021 at 2:47 PM

    I enjoyed your blog post. It was very nice and I like how you related your immediate thoughts and feelings to a quote in the Great Gatsby. I agree with the fact that our perception of something based on our mood. It is always better to look on the bright side and not let small things get to us. Our life is too short to worry about everything.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RayNovember 13, 2021 at 7:20 PM

    I love how you described an average autumn afternoon in such a poetic way: I can visualize you sitting there watching the clouds idly drift by. Similarly, I really enjoyed reading your writing style, it is a wonderful blend of analysis and train of thought. It was great that seamlessly shifted from talking about your surrounds to the heated argument in the novel.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aayush SharmaNovember 14, 2021 at 12:32 PM

    I really loved the way you described your morning. The diction and imagery made me feel like I was really with you. Even more so, however, I loved the way you connected your thoughts and morning to the Great Gatsby in such a easy manner. The points you made were always very well thought out, and I really loved how you offered different perspectives, as well as that tiny little connection to a previous moment as the concluding sentence.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yousef Al-AniNovember 15, 2021 at 3:28 AM

    I really enjoyed your description about your morning. You used great description that provided effective and vivid imagery. I like your concluding paragraph, as it is true, it is our mood and reactions that set the tempo of our day, not the weather. I also liked how you connected the heated argument between Tom and Gatsby to your Saturday morning.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Elephant in the Room

In 2018, The Washington Post stated that school shootings were "a uniquely American crisis," and they're absolutely right. An old proverb states that "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." But is there any proverb for a country that's been fooled more than 1,300 times? The United States is one of the only countries in the world where our leaders time and time again do not understand the benefits of gun control. In April 1996, Australia had one of its worst mass shooting events ever, in which a man killed 35 people and wounded 18 others at the popular tourist location of Port Arthur. And what happened after? The country created the National Firearms Agreement (NFA), which banned the ownership of automatic and semi-automatic and ended up destroying more than a million firearms. Just recently, in 2019, New Zealand banned semi-automatic weapons and magazines with more than ten rounds after the Christchurch mosque shootings. However, none of t...
4 comments
Read more

The Cookie Cutter Model: Preying Off America's Weak

One eating environment that I grew up relatively familiar with was Burger King, the infamous "home of the Whopper." Before I continue with the rest of this piece, one thing I would like to praise Burger King for is its relative honesty. The moment you step into the front doorway, you get exactly what you are paying for. There's no sense of false pretentiousness about it. Take one look around, and you can immediately tell that you have stepped right into a microcosm of corporate America. You're greeted by the sight of workers and cashiers, many of whom are being forced to survive on the minimum wage. Take a peek into the kitchen and you can see, firsthand, the standardization of the food that will be served to you. Pop a patty on the grill and pull it out to serve the people. This process is repeated innumerable times every single day. In fact, it's repeated everywhere as well. Every Whopper made here, in Troy, Michigan, is the same as a Whopper made in Kenya or A...
3 comments
Read more

Talking Tamil

In class last week, we looked at two different interpretations on what it felt like to be an outsider society. We read Firoozeh Dumas's piece on what it meant to have a foreign name in America, and David Sedaris talked about how it felt to not understand French in a French class (with a scary teacher as well). I also feel that in some ways, I can relate to these two authors. I grew up speaking Tamil, just as the rest of the members of my family had done. I never went to daycare like other children did, so my only exposure to English for the first four years of my life was the television. With this in mind, you can probably tell I never really had an American accent growing up. In fact, when watching old videos of myself, the first thing that stands out is the heavy Indian accent I had. I never really saw it as a bad thing. One thing you should know about me as a child is that I loved talking. I didn't care who I was talking to or what I was talking about, all I knew was that I...
3 comments
Read more