The prodigal Son

This story connects with me on a personal level. That being because I myself have a brother. This story from the bible is very inspirational because I see the things u can learn thru the bible. I am Catholic and do go to mass and know some things that are in the bible because of people telling me, but I have never really physically read the bible in depth. This story showed the morals you can acquire thru the bible and actually makes me want to read the bible more often. In this story it shows a father and his two sons in a wealthy family. Half of the money is going to each of the siblings. One sibling is faithful and loyal to his father and continues to work although inheriting all this money. The other brother wastes all his money doing things that might b considered sins. Although he does sinful thing with his wealth, he returns because he is now poor and his father accepts him no matter what the negative things he did. I compare this to Jesus probably saying that although we as Gods children may sin; he will always be our father and will accept us after repenting/saying sorry.

My inspiration: Success

I want to be successful in my life. There are many different ways of defining success and happiness. What I learned from my dad is that if you try your hardest and you’re well prepared you shouldn’t be nervous of negative results because you know you gave it your all. Another thing I learned is that the real happy people, the real rich are those that no matter what they are happy with what they have. What’s the point of being a millionaire if you have no friends, and your arrogance brushes people away? “As long as you’re happy with what you have, and work as hard as you can, and affect people in positive ways, then that’s when you are really successful”- My dad. Although I understand that, and I live my life to that principle and just always smile and not look at things too serious and affect the people around me positive. I want to be successful so bad, and make money to affect my family in a better way and have them stop working as hard and enjoy life more. My vision that I’ve had for years of me being successful is kind of movie like. I’ve visualized myself with a champagne bottle in my right hand, cigar on my left, staring into the Miami Skyline from an apartment balcony on one of the highest buildings by the beach, and my family and friends right behind just staring out the window and just reminiscing on from where we came from. I know I can do this, and even if I don’t, I’ll be happy because I’ll know I gave it my all.

Barrack vs Romney

Who is going to be the president next year? That's a question everyone wants to know. I am very confused about who to vote for. On one hand Obama is one of the most charismatic speakers ever. He speaks of great ideas but so far there hasn't been a big change. Its not his fault though because he inherited a debt. But Romney on the other hand knows how to make money. This guy is street smart and knows what to do to make money because he's rich so being the president isn't going to help him financially so he's probably doing this because he cares about the economy. I think I'm leaning towards Romney also because I don't agree with some of Barracks morals. He's pro-choice and I don't agree with that because you can be taking a life through abortion. If I vote its probably going to be for Romney just because of his morals and that he would be bringing something new to the table. We'll see who gets elected, hopefully this country can be the powerhouse it once was.

Gang Violence

The government and police officers are always saying things like “let’s stop gang violence”. Just by that they are wrong you can’t just stop it because it is something that is constantly growing. Instead of just going out there trying to arrest these gangsters we should actually find the root of the problem and try to stop it. The root of the problem has become quite revealing to me because of the fact that gang violence has been something I’ve heard about ever since I was kid around my grandma’s neighborhood. The reason most kids join gangs isn’t because they are in hood, which is just a bad excuse. The reason is that these kids, most of them, are raised by a single mother who is busy trying to bring money home to pay bills. This leaves these teenage kids unattended and exposed to some of the harsh realities that happen in the hood. Same thing daughters, most strippers/ prostitutes are girls that were raised by a single mother and are looking for the love of men in bad places, self-consciously, and that is why they become strippers. Boys in the hood are left to be raised by themselves or “the streets” because they only have one parent which is preoccupied trying to work to pay bills. These kids join gangs because it is the closest thing to a family that they will probably have. So instead of just going out to over town, Little Havana, etc, the police should try helping these families so they can get out and live positively and raise their kids the right way to prevent all this gang violence. If you look at the stats most families in Coral Gables and Brickell have a Mother, and Father, resulting in their kids not being in cliques wile in Hispanic, and black communities it is the exact opposite. So the point isn’t to stop it, it is to prevent it first and then when you know it won’t reproduce then you try stopping it. You must get to the origin first, to solve the problem.

“We are locked in history, and they were not.”

History is just as much of an idea as it is an actuality. History can be looked at in many different ways and you can have many unique perspectives on it. The Cave of Forgotten dreams gave me a bunch of new ways of interpreting life awe live it and how these "cavemen" lived it. We have history to look back on so we know that something happened previous to us, but those people back then didn't have that because there was no paintings or stories to be told to explain the past. Once these "cavemen" began the cave drawings, that was not only the beginning of narrative, but along with that history was invented. Just think about it, what really is history? If we had no stories, books etc, how would we know there is a past, and that there were things before we were born? To be honest we would pretty much be like dogs or other animals with no recollection of the past that occurred before them, and we would have no plans for the future because to move on we would have to know there was a starting point to improve on. In my opinions, humans and our critical thinking began when the paintings came about and there were forms of communication to share past experiences and to fuel new ones in the future. That is what this quote means, that since they had no prior knowledge of "history" they were just living day by day without caring or knowing of past experiences, while we know the past and our history and that makes us "locked" because we know what it is, and we know that we cannot change it.

School System

The school system is extremely corrupt if u ask me and is just looking for money. They are sacrificing learning opportunity of this generation and future one because of greed. Also I believe that the classes being taught and the way they are taught are pointless and its just making us students into little robots programmed to do the same thing. Society pushes away creativity and advocates a 9-5 counting numbers. Pablo Picasso said that we're all born artists but we change as we grow up. “All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” That is directly proportional to schools trapping our minds. Instead of forcing subjects on students, the students should be obliged to take a math, English, biology, and history. These classes should be taught and not rushed. Also, the school system should give students the freedom of learning art among different classes to expand their thinking. The grading system also puts a lot of pressure and makes teachers not correctly go over things, and puts students in a weird position where cheating is a viable option. I don’t know if this system I am thinking of is a good system, and it probably isn't, but the educational system needs to fix a lot of things because right now they are sacrificing people’s future for money.