According to Steve Goodier, “If you love people, you have no desire to judge them.” I first saw this quote when it was posted on my fifth—grade classroom wall, and I hated it, Rather, I hated Steve Goodier’s intention, but I realized that the quote’s truthfulness was inarguable, I come from a privileged, uneducated family who, frankly didn’t think a college education is important. Being that they believed this, I have always been undoubtedly the black sheep, and that irrefutably won’t ever change.
For many years, this reality affected me in many terrible ways, ways in which brought me to the conclusion of resenting them Hate is a shield, and mine was impenetrable. I began to candidly learn about my family’s education background around the age of ten. No one attended college, not even my lst, 2nd or 3rd cousins, aunts, uncles, or any other relatives What is this? I am the true definition of a first-generation college student.
The first three years of this investigation of my relatives was characterized solely by my disappointment toward them, manifested by hurting them, while each moment hurting myself twice as much. When I laid eyes on them, they were just objects of my unabated hatred, not because of anything they’d ever done, but because of everything they represented. judged them to be heartless, soulless, one-dimensional figures: they were representations of my disappointment and pain. I left whenever a bunch of them entered the room, I slammed car doors in their faces.
Throughout my seventh to ninth-grade year, I took pride in the fact that I had not participated in any major family gatherings or events I treated them with such disrespect and anger because my hate was my protection, my shield. I was accustomed to viewing them as the embodiment of my pain, was afraid to love uneducated people, and afraid that if I gave them a chance, I might love them, For those three years, my family didn’t hate me; they understood me.
They understood my anger and my confusion, and my mom especially put her faith in me, although she had every reason not to. To her, I was essentially a good person, just confused and scared. My family saw me as I wished I could see myself. None of this became clear to me overnight. Instead, over the next two years, during tenth and eleventh grade, the one-dimensional images of them in my mind began to take the shape as people. As I let go of my hatred and my disappointment, I gave them a chance I realized they depended on me to break the circle and get an education, I understood that I had to be the change. Shortly after I came out of my hatred spell, I started to voice my goals and aspirations to them on different occasions. Each one carefully listened, open-mouthed, yet doubtful.
As I was expressing myself to them, I was thinking in the back of my mind “Oh boy, you’d better not try and shoot me down, you‘ve got to believe in me, one of us has got to make it” The veracity of this realization was crazy – I had to self-motivate I had no other choice. During school I’ve always been surrounded by affluent peers, this has just made me want to succeed more; do spectacular things more, I believe and I know that I cant Three weeks ago, I saw that same Steve Goodier quote again, but this time, I smiled. My family never gave up on me, and the chance they gave me was a chance that changed my life Because of this, I know the value of a chance, of having faith in people, of seeing others as they wish they could see themselves. I’m glad I have a lot of time left, because I definitely have a lot of things to accomplish, a lot of people left to love.
A Discussion on Hate as a Shield. (2023, Apr 09). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/a-discussion-on-hate-as-a-shield/