Personal Response on the On the Rainy River free essay sample

On the other hand, for me, Canada is separation: separation from the friends and family who I most dearly loved and looked up to, separation from the institutions which developed the principles and character I have today, separation from the culture, language, and traditions that I grew up in, separation from the life I have lived for seventeen years, and separation from the dreams I have dreamed for seventeen years†¦ or is it? Tim and I might have totally different definition of Canada but for both of us the decision to move or to stay was merely just a choice. I lived seventeen years of my life in the Philippines, four years of which is with my mom separated from us because she had to move and work in Canada while my dad also seemingly separated from us since he had to work longer hours shifting his loneliness and longing for my mom, to his focus on his daily counseling and paper work. We will write a custom essay sample on Personal Response on the On the Rainy River or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Within those four years, my mom was able to cope with the sadness of being homesick by being able to talk to us every day for an hour before we went to school in the morning and a couple of hours before we went to sleep at night. Those hours of conversation made us feel like we were closer than we actually were. My mom became more well-informed with every detail of our daily activities from the morning we woke up and got ready for school up to the last prayer we recited at night. The worries and fears of being separated from my mom were changed into joy and love of being closely connected as we constantly shared our stories from different sides of the world every single day. After years of waiting, our family finally got the blessing we prayed for: our Visa, a Visa that finally makes our family go to Canada and be with mom. Through the Visa we have the opportunity to be together again as a family. Ironically, I can’t help but cry and feel miserable. It is not that I didn’t want to be with my mom again, of course I did, but it is because of those seventeen years that I felt like I am wasting. At that time, I believed that I still have a choice, a choice to not move to Canada and just stay in the Philippines and continue to fulfill those dreams I have set for myself for seventeen years. Days passed by and my begging of staying in the Philippines was not considered, in fact, I was even asked to assist my dad in doing all those things in relation to the application— from filling up tons of forms from the embassy to photocopying every file of information that each of the member of the family have. I never wanted to move to Canada but with the family being at stake, I understood that the truth is†¦ I don’t actually have a choice. In June of 1968, after receiving the draft letter that asks Tim to go to war, his ordinary teenage life changed into a complicated life of making choices. Being a man of intellect and not of action, Tim sees himself as a young man ‘too good, too smart, too compassionate, too everything (39)’ for the war that he never understood and have always hated. With the experience he had in the summer of 1968 working in an Armour meatpacking plant in his hometown in Minnesota, together with the draft letter experience, he realized that his life in the plant is seemingly a microcosm of the Vietnam War. The eight long hours of standing a quarter-mile from the assembly line removing blood clots from the necks of the pigs, the way he uses that heavy eighty-pound, some kind of a water gun, the unpleasant work, the nasty stinking smell that seems to stay within his whole body, the dates that he couldn’t get that summer, the feeling of isolation from his community, brought him to two choices: flee to Canada bringing with him his morals and beliefs but be branded a coward and a traitor or fight for the war with his life and reputation to make his people proud, but lose his principles or maybe even his life. The same society that built the morals and beliefs and principles he has in him had then become the same society that crippled him to make the choice of leaving all those behind as he stated, â€Å"And what was so sad, I realized, was that Canada had become a pitiful fantasy. Silly and hopeless. It was no longer a possibility. Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. (55)† In the stories Tim O’ Brien and I shared, there is this one little detail in common, we both made a choice. At first, the decision of moving to Canada felt like a selfish decision I was â€Å"forced† to make only for the family’s sake. Actually, I even held them responsible for my misery for a couple of weeks. But as those weeks and months pass by, I came to realize that such choice was actually one of the greatest things that can happen to me, for it was more than just an opportunity for our family to be whole but a breakthrough to endless possibilities towards reaching my dreams. However, for Tim, without any further details after he went to the war, we are left into thinking what might have happened after he made his choice. But as I delve deeply into his tale, I can feel how much he regretted the decision he made just because he does not want the feeling of embarrassment and shame and of cowardice and isolation from the society of people that led him into being the person he is. My decision to choose family over the Philippines and Tim’s decision to choose Vietnam over Canada are our choices made as we come to consider our personal priorities and obligations to my family and to his country. Choice is an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. As Steve Maraboli says, â€Å"How would your life be different if†¦ You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day†¦You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others†. Like Tim and I, each individual has choices they have to decide on. No matter what kind of decision it is, may it be something for ourselves or for the people around us, we cannot just say that the society â€Å"pressured† us to make such choice. Being individuals granted with free will, we would always be held accountable for every choice we make. In the end, the decision whether to let others poison our lives with their opinions or stand strong in our own journey is merely up to us.