Topic 1: Young Lives
How do our surroundings impact our lives?
The situations that we face each day are what make up the context of our lives. The places you live your life pose a huge impact on your behavior and actions. The path that our lives take is greatly affected by our experiences and if you think of where you are now and how you got there, it puts that into perspective. In class we have been discussing films that show how young lives are affected by their surroundings and experiences as they grow up.
In the film Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto and Alberto travel from Brazil to Peru by motorcycle. As they traveled from place to place they saw corruption, poverty, illnesses, and more. It was Ernesto’s reaction to want to help anyone that he could. They started to stay at facilities and help nurse people back to health and to give diagnoses. They learned how each city worked and what their culture and economic standing was. They became well educated by their experiences and their surroundings. They witnessed the great disparities in South America, discovering poor peasants and being exposed to the exploitation of workers by wealthy industrialists. Once they made it to Peru they discovered a colony of leprosy patients. This changed Ernesto’s values so much that he took side with the patients, forgetting his own comfort. Being surrounded by these people changed him. He completely devoted himself to helping these people and making a difference in their lives. He could have used them for shelter and food, but instead he became attached to them and saw their situation as a chance to make a difference.
Another important scene from this film is when Ernesto and Alberto come across the Anaconda Mining Company. They meet a couple who tells them how horrible it is to work for them and the awful conditions that they endure. The men witness the workers not being fed nor given water. The business men treat them like dirt. Ernesto gets extremely emotional in this scene, resulting with him throwing rocks and forcefully yelling at the business owners. He acted this way because after talking with the mining couple and gaining an appreciation for them, he cared about the way their people are treated. If they never would have gone on this trip Ernesto would have never seen how poorly they were treated and wouldn’t have such strong emotions about the issue. This is when he starts to think politically about what he sees. This scene shows how much your surroundings make an impact on your life. You can’t chose which situations are thrown at you, but you can choose how you will react to them. After experiencing situations like these, Alberto and Ernesto’s voyage becomes a more serious trip then planned. It is no longer about having fun and traveling for the hell of it. It is about learning what is going on in the world and how they can make a difference. Throughout the film they learn about themselves and about what they are passionate about. They use their surroundings as a learning experience.
In the film City of God, we also see how much your surroundings influence your life. In this case, Rocket grows up in the City of God and is constantly around gangs, drugs, and violence. Most kids are involved in some way with a gang in the city. Although Rocket has been surrounded by them his whole life, he chooses not to be part of them. Rocket doesn’t want any trouble. He could’ve easily become part of a gang and endured in their culture of violence but instead he held true to his values and did what he could to not cause any trouble. Rocket learned a lot from his experiences, both good and bad. He learned from the mistakes that people around him made. He didn’t let his surroundings consume him. Your surroundings play a huge part of your life. You learn from them and you become who you are because of them but you don’t have to become part of them. Rocket is a stronger person after experiencing so much violence as a child. It has shaped him into a well-rounded and confident person. Growing up in a city like the City of God, you are given a label. People are very quick to pass judgement. It is hard to overcome and look past it when you’ve been labeled by society. People might assume that you’re a gang member or that you sell drugs just based on your appearance and where you live. Labels mean nothing if you are able to prove them wrong and be who you want to be. Rocket’s dream was to become a photographer and by keeping his priorities straight he was able to overcome his surroundings and become successful.
The path that our lives take is greatly affected by our experiences. You don’t have control over everything that happens but you have control over how you deal with it. You chose how your surroundings and experiences mold your life. You can either let negative people put you down, or you can learn from their mistakes and use them as motivation to become an even better person. The path that we are intending to go down, or our parents have intended us to go down, could so easily be switched. Life is all about the unexpected and you gain something from everything you do in life, good and bad. Your life is made up of the experiences you go through and what you take from them. People who don’t see that are often times unhappy and blame others for their sorrow. You don’t have control over everything that will be thrown at you, so make the very best of it and learn from your experiences. (Word Count: 987)