This I believe

May 18, 2010

Jeffrey Cho

This I believe

Often times in our lives we face many different kinds of situations that we just cannot understand or believe. When this happens, many people try to convince themselves that they could not do anything about it, that it was all a destiny. Destiny means that the past, present and future was, is, and will be chosen for us. I do not believe in destiny.

I believe in necessity. Necessity means that everything that happens in the world only happens because of certain causes. It may sound similar to destiny. However they are completely different from each other in a sense that destiny has only one result no matter what we do, whereas necessity means that one action has the possibility to change everything. An example of destiny would be like math; two plus two is four, no matter what we do. Fortunately, most things in real life don’t follow the same pattern for every single occasion. I believe that every decision we make are the ones that changes our consequences. William Bryan once quoted, "Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." Therefore, only thing that we know for sure is that for those who condemn (Thesaurus)destiny for bad results, positive consequences will never follow.

In a nutshell, I believe that we should keep in our mind that we are responsible for whatever happens as a result of our past actions. It is true that sometimes in life, we encounter some events that just do not seem fair. However, instead of blaming the results on destiny right away, we should learn to get over them and try harder, so that we can recieve better results next time.

Self assessment:

1. When I first planned the essay, it was planned to be 4 paragraph essay, so I had to stuff all the points in one paragraph

2. I felt that the conclusion was weak, it might have been better if I used the quote in conclusion instead.

3. I used the word "condemn" as a thesaurus, and I was not sure if it was suitable for that sentence