Taken For Granted

Taken For Granted

The alarm goes off at exactly 6:00 AM.  You roll over, turn off the alarm, maybe scroll on tiktok for a little bit.  Then, you do your morning routine to get ready for another hard, long, grueling day of high school.  On top of all this you might have a practice, workout, club meeting or any other after school activity. You also have to do that couple hours of homeworks that were assigned in those 6 classes throughout the day.  Oh yeah and lets not forget about those good old standardized tests like the SAT or ACT you have to study for.  

The whole time throughout the day your probably like this sucks, or man I just want an extra hour of sleep.  I certainly know that I have thought those very exact things.  And I know you have too.  In fact, according to David Foster Wallace's piece, This is Water, it's the way our brains are hard-wired to think.  It puts you at the very center of attention and makes you think about everything negative that is happening around you instead of focusing about all the good we have in our life that is taken for granted.

Lets take a little closer look at everything that you can do.  You can wake up where you have water to brush your teeth and take a shower.   You have good clothes to put on and wear to school.  You have a car or bus that takes you to school.  You have supplies for school (iPads, notebooks, pencils).  You have a good high school where you are getting a good education.  The list could go on forever.  All these things we don't think about.  We take it for granted.  It connects to one of the most iconic quotes in the movie Farris Bueller's Day Off.



The quote shows how although life can feel overwhelming and difficult, it's important to stop sometimes and look around of all the great stuff you have instead of taking it for granted.  It won't be easy to change your thinking to that but once you do, you will see your daily life a whole lot more positive.  

That's all I have got for you in the second ever blog post of Avi's Adventures and see you next week.


Comments

  1. Eric ZhouSeptember 14, 2024 at 10:05 PM

    By changing the anecdote in "This is Water" to reflect high schoolers you have given me a new perspective on the whole idea of mindset shift. This really helped me understand what to change in my way of thinking according to "this is water".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alex DanialSeptember 15, 2024 at 1:04 PM

    I like how you wrote your blog while keeping your intended audience in mind, by doing this you can relate to the audience on a personal level. Also, i like how you synthized your writing to “This is Water” seemlessly without interupting the flow of your writing

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jack WangSeptember 15, 2024 at 8:57 PM

    Your quote gave a lot of meaning in relation to your title. Your anecdote in the beginning gave me a new perspective that was relatable to me on how Wallace wants us to interpret "hard wired, default setting". I like your ending on a good note also for Avi's Adventures!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2 Week Only Up Phase - Fortnite Edition

Image
Smashing my keyboard, about to break my monitor, I had just fallen down for the 50th time. This time from the skyscraper of floating buses, instead of the pool of giant purple cubes named Kevin. It was this cursed Fortnite creative map that basically ruled over my life like a videogame dictator. It decided when I slept, ate, and even when I dared to "touch grass." Every jump felt like a dopamine hit but every fall felt like personal attack to my soul. I would swear, "I'll quit after this try." I don't think I've ever openly lied to myself that much. One day I reached the top. VICTORY!! Then I fell. Game turned off. Never opened again.
Read more

Three Timelines, One Story: The Structure of Dunkirk

Image
       One of my favorite all-time films is Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan. Although the film seems nothing more than another war movie, the structure makes it feel like something completely new. I was immediately drawn in by how there were multiple elements used to tell the story being land, air, and finally sea. Each move at a different pace, and with the lack of dialogue during the movie, it was complicated to follow at first, but as the story continues, each element is used together to build up to the final climax.  To set up the rising action, we are first introduced to the land element, where thousands of soldiers are trapped at Dunkirk, hoping for an escape back to the UK. Nolan uses this perspective to make time feel slow and gurgling, showing close and intimate danger while also creating a sense of desperation. Then we move to the sea, where we see a group of civilians trying to sail from the UK to Dunkirk to hopefully save at least some soldiers. This jo...
Read more

Laughter, whats that?

Image
The other day, I caught myself scrolling through my camera roll, looking at old videos and pictures to simply pass the time. Out of nowhere, I stumbled across a video from my 8th-grade DC trip where my friends and I were exploring one of the museums. Suddenly, I burst into laughter. Not because anything shocking happened, as I've seen the video before, heck, I took the video, but because somehow my brain still doesn't expect things to go the way they do. That's when I realized almost everything that has made me laugh has the same main ingredient: the unexpected. The funniest moments in my life are never the planned ones, but they're the ones completely unhinged and off-script. It's the "this was NOT supposed to happen" moments that always get me. For example, the other day I was playing Fortnite. I was in a normal box fight, something I have done hundreds, if not thousands of times. I was in the perfect position, ready to blast my friend in our battle, but...
Read more