Boring or Not?

by Arvi Calagui

First of all, I’m going to say, here and now, that reflection was the last thing on my mind ever since I’ve started taking my studies seriously. Back in high school, the main pattern I did to get by was to read the required text, familiarize myself with the important points that might spring out of the quizzes, and then forget about them afterwards. In fact, I tend to memorize my friends’ funny stories and I never forget them almost word for word up until today, and these are the things that I don’t even need for school. Basically, I like remembering and experiencing fun stuff because it makes my life carefree and removes all the tension I may have. As for reading very serious texts, I’ve always thought that thinking about them so much would make them even more boring. And in reflection, lived experiences are further analyzed in a deeper way, which I thought was destroying the experience itself because of how reflection turns it into a boring textbook article.

Now I am in college, and have discovered that a deeper understanding of texts is prioritized over memorization (though it is still a part of it). My original pattern no longer worked (specifically to my English and literature classes). At first, I never really understood how reflection really works in writing papers and such. I just typed anything I could find in a text that seemed important and gave my understanding about them word per word. But gradually, I realized how to do it right. I am not supposed to just let my mind come out and look for information that I need, I am also supposed to let it comeback, or simply to use the things I have gathered and look at them in a deeper sense, seeing them not just in their written form, but on what they really want to convey. And before you say it, yes, the metaphor I just used is derived from the one said in class. Reflection is a process of coming out and coming back. Not just to read or experience, but to analyze and understand beyond the senses.

Given that philosophy and theology classes focus more on lived experiences that can be incorporated in readings, reflection is obviously an important aspect in studying them. My old-school definition of reflection before was something like “to read, to understand, or to make it seem like I understand”, but no more. My past notion that reflection makes my life and everything boring is also long gone because I realized that there is a point. I can’t just lead myself to stop at “this happened and “that happened”. I need to go further and realize that these things are happening around me. Both good things and bad things are happening around me. They are not just events that I am watching from a distance, but they are events that I am involved in because they happen in this world, and I belong to this world.

Reading books or doing other stuff (watching movies, playing games, etc.), and reflecting on them do turn up some very interesting stuff. Reflection is not boring after all. SO now I can conclusively say that reflection is one of the things that comes to mind when I live my life.