The Urgency Within Passion

In Part II of Lynsey Addario’s “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War”, I learned something about the September 11th issue that I had not previously considered. This incident is a lesson frequently taught in middle school history courses, the devastation, the destruction of families, and the formation of community that came from it. It was emotional, real, and enormously pathetic. I sympathized and never questioned the one-sidedness.

The series of chapters of her time spent in the Middle East after the attack was a new perspective. The more she learned, she empathized for the Middle Eastern people and felt dubiousness towards the U.S. army; the sense of justice she gained as she concluded the section. She had to do this to reveal the truth. Her purpose is to educate the American public and pull back the blinders that media authority set on America, thinking raw and truthful information was “too real”, and leave it for the people to decide. This type of resoluteness isn’t something I’ve experienced yet.

My interest in anthropology came from my interest in humans as social creatures. The way we interact now, the way our ancestors acted then, I want to know this and be the bridge that traverses the lingual and cultural barrier much like Addario does when she pursues her photojournalistic instinct. She began this book with danger and intrigue. As the reader, we wanted to know what type of story we’re getting into, why she’s out there, and what would we do in such a serious situation with our lives on the line. She hints at issues that prevail within the story, the difference in treatment between men and women in the field of journalists and photographers; the inability to maintain proper relationships; the danger, the worry, and the urgency to pursue reality. I would like to set my passion blog up like this. To reel in the reader, portray the urgency I feel for this matter and have them develop intrigue in it as well. FInding this balance will be difficult, and I plan to use credible sources to pinpoint the seriousness of self-esteem and -confidence issues in our society. My first blogs will be experiments in aiming for this goal, but I plan to achieve before these blog assignments are over.

Preparation Against What Ifs

Addario used the anecdote about her Nana’s missed chance at love to explain the relationship she has with her job as a war correspondent. If she hadn’t pursued it, she would have ended up regretting it and wondering what would happen if she had chosen it.

However, unlike Addario, I’m not as decisive and often choose comfort over change, leading to me wondering all the what ifs afterward. A situation that frames this well is my cousin Felicia’s but also mine.

Whenever I talk to my cousin, I can’t help but think of how complicated her life is. Aside from my brother who’s twenty-five, there’s no one else around her age, and as a twenty-seven year old with a daughter, there’s a lot on her plate. The person she’s dating also has a child around her daughter’s age which I’m sure alleviates some of that pressure. At one point, they lived together but broke things off for a while. Now, they’re back together again but Felicia lives back home with my aunt instead.

While I don’t always know what’s going on with her, if I could venture to guess one of the things that concern her at the moment, it’d be that she was lonely. This is something I sympathize with because I’ve been in a similar situation.

When I was younger, I would hope for a friend that would stay up late talking with me and that I could share my problems with. I finally met someone like that in high school. There was a moment when my relationship with them reached an unhealthy break, and my friends advised me to break things off. However, instead, I hesitated and hoped for things to change and get better on their own.

I didn’t want to leave them because they were the closest person I had. And when the usual family gossip circulated, I learned that Felicia felt that way too. She told her mom that she was afraid no one would love her again. So she stayed. And I did too.

I’m fully aware of the lack of confidence behind this decision. That things would never be the same, that I’d have to wait for someone new and start all over again. Even though things are much better on my end, I wonder if I made the right choice every so often.

Decisiveness and confidence are two attributes that take time and trial and error to achieve. However, the lesson I want to take from this and want to share with you, the reader, is to not be afraid of change. The best ingredient for fear is resolve. Your instinct is the first step, your decision the next, and your resolve the final. My hope is that my passion blog can give courage to people in situations like these where they’re afraid of making a change, whether it’s small or large. I want to be able to tell them what I wish I knew.

That nothing’s ever impossible if you prepare yourself for it.