A View On My Side of the Coin

By Ina Pizzaro

4 July 2013
Discussed Text: Garcia, "The Promotion of Responsibility and Hope"

I give great importance to the things that dictate who I am as a person. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. My parents know who I date. I only party when I have my parents’ permission. I have never crossed the line. For most these things don’t matter, as they believe these are the stuff that comprise a teenage life well-lived. YOLO, right? Well, I disagree.

"Dude, drinking is part of growing up!"

What is there to growing up really? Isn't it ironic how most people claim drinking as part of something that’s actually a process of molding us into becoming better, into actually “growing up"?

My high school teacher assured me that I was going to learn to drink the moment I’d be in college, especially that he knew I was going to study in Manila, away from my parents. I told him not to generalize, because I was different. But he doubted it, shrugged his shoulders and said, “That’s what everyone said." I just smiled. I didn't want to argue about something I still couldn't fully defend myself from, as it is still something that is going to happen. I was certain in my heart that he was wrong but I kept my mouth shut. I knew only time could tell.

Isn't YOLO supposed to remind us that this is a one-way life? That there are no U-turn slots? That the world doesn't care if you took the wrong turn? YOLO. YOLO! YOLO? It is, I think, something that’s very much misunderstood. As I have learned in class, and as a Christian, “Freedom is not doing whatever you please, but doing whatever you ought." With that being said, I guess I don't have to sound so omniscient by dwelling on this matter. I just really know it means different from what most people think it is.

I was raised by a Dad who doesn’t smoke, who doesn’t drink for “fun" and whose only real contentment is a good conversation with the family at home. My Dad is very God-fearing and family-oriented. Whenever I open up to him, his final advice would always be to “talk to God about it" because he said He always listens. I guess it is why I have learned to always communicate with God, and to always believe that everything happens for His reason. I was raised by a Mum who told me not to believe that drinking is part of growing up, because she turned out more than okay without ever having to gulp a spoonful of champagne in her whole life even when everyone else was enjoying their mojitos and screwdrivers and flaming ferraris. From her I learned that it is indeed my choice whether to just freely go with the flow or to choose to brave the current.

I don’t want to be a person I’d end up regretting, because this is indeed a one way life. My idea of living the life is having a family whom I can totally be myself and have real conversations with. It is surrounding myself with things which, and people who, truly matter to me. FUN doesn’t have to involve alcohol or nicotine intake. When people tell me I don't have something to laugh at when I grow old for I haven't really done something crazy in my teenage life, I laugh at them. I guess I have come to a point in my life that, even when I'm only eighteen, I have already sincerely realized the things I can always choose to live without. What is there to a last-friday-night-was AWESOME moment that makes it worth remembering anyway? What’s so cool about allowing other teenagers dictate how life should be lived?

I am no saint. I make mistakes, and, like you, I constantly sin. But I’m most willing to put my life on the line every time people try to judge me about my principles. NOT EVERYONE is the same, even our fingerprints can prove that. I’m not saying that what everyone else is doing is wrong, because who am I to say really?

My point is this: in this generation, even when most just laugh at people who choose to live like I do (some might even already be judging me now at the back of their heads), we can still always choose to stand firm by our principles and be strong enough to go against the status quo. Because really, in the end, what matters are the things I can bring with me to heaven, and who I have grown to become the moment I face my God. I was blessed with the freedom and the will to choose my own path and to make my own life. This way, I don’t just exist—I actually live. And this is who I choose to be. This is the life I want.

Taking The One Less Traveled By

by Katya Vargas

4 December 2012
Discussed text: Levinas, "The Solitude of Being," Ethics and Infinity


Today’s lesson on jouissance reminded me of a poem I took up as a senior in high school. It’s entitled “The Road Not Taken” and it’s written by Robert Frost.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

We learned that the meaning of the term jouissance is to enjoy something that makes life worth living. It is finding pleasure in doing anything that enhances our zest for life. I remembered this poem because it’s about choosing the road less travelled with a little hesitance in the beginning but without any regrets in the end. It’s about enjoying the journey, taking time to love and live every step of the way. In the poem, as the persona is choosing which road to take, s/he only knows that one road is more travelled than the other but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the better road. S/he has to go through it to know, to find out. Sometimes the less popular choice is the better one because not everyone has to have the same wants and needs in life. Sometimes, the harder thing to do is the best thing to do because it pushes us to find what we really love to do and who we really are. Everyone just needs to learn how to live, how to be, needs to find his/her own happiness. Life is what you make it. Whatever choice you make in anything and everything you do, you have to stick by it and let yourself enjoy the experience.

The class was left with the question “Why do you think Levinas places jouissance after il y a?” for reflection. I found the answer to this question in the poem as the persona is choosing which road to take; s/he is in a state of “in between-ness” and confusion. S/he doesn’t know which road to take, which choice to make. THERE IS (Il y a) a choice to be made, but the persona is still unsure and stuck. It is when s/he takes action and goes down a road does s/he realize the beauty of his/her decision, once s/he has reaped what s/he has sown does the “Jouissance” come into play. “Jouissance” is a reaction to “Il y a” and I think Levinas placed the terms in such order because the former is the answer to the latter.