Revolution.

Henry David Thoreau said something that has profoundly affected how I live my life, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” I have this insatiable hunger for knowledge and this undying attitude to self-improve, to reach my goals, and to be all that I can be. So, as you can imagine, this virtue project was right up my alley. While I am very confident, I know I can improve, so the virtues I chose to implement into my life were industriousness, creativity, and assertiveness. I have a lot on my plate this year when it comes to schoolwork, and then when you factor in all the extra-curricular things I love to do there is no room for laziness. Because of this, I chose to implement industriousness. I am also a very creative person, but a creative person deprived of time. So to help counter this time constraint I devoted a day to creativity. Lastly, I chose to work on my assertiveness. I realize that this sounds a bit like an oxymoron, but the fact is, I sometimes tend to ignore things that I shouldn’t and assert myself at inappropriate times. Instead this being a day of implementing something completely new, I chose to rather refine a virtue I already had. I had three days to put these virtues into practice, and here’s it went.

 

Day One, Industriousness

 

By far this was the hardest virtue to implement, and that’s not because I am necessarily lazy, it’s just that if something doesn’t interest me I won’t do it. Today was about pushing aside all my likes and dislikes and getting things done. And getting things done I did. The day before I actually decided not to do my homework, so to counter that I decided to wake up at five am on my industriousness day and get it done. Luckily, I woke up with the right attitude and was ready to work as hard as I could.

School went fairly well. As opposed to goofing off whenever I could, I actually worked on any homework I had. I also brought a book to read whenever I had a moment of downtime so that I wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing. Yet, regardless of how hard I worked that day, I still had homework. That was kind of upsetting, especially because of how exhausted I was by the time I got home. But my industriousness didn’t stop there. I made plans to go running with a friend right after school, and by the time I was done with that, I was hardly looking forward to doing my homework.

And then things went a little sour. I managed to get a majority of my homework done. I managed to write a few blog entries. I managed to finish a good chunk of the book I was reading. But I lost it. I think I went a little overboard and was maybe a bit too industrious for my own good. I didn’t have much downtime for myself and I wasn’t happy. So I didn’t do my math homework. I knew I would have time the next day in class and I wasn’t going to worry about it. I may not have been 100% industrious, but I highly doubt anyone can be (unless you are Ben Franklin).

Day 2, Creativity

 

As I mentioned before, it is not that I’m not creative; it’s just that I don’t have time to be. At school I had an assembly to go to for the first three hours of the day for juniors who were not taking the PSAT. Instead of actually listening during the presentation, I decided that would be a great time to be creative. So during that time I sketched nearly the entire time. And let me tell you how good that felt. I haven’t sketched in quite a long time and I was so happy to finally be doing it again.

But my creativity didn’t stop there. I decided during my last three hours of the school day I would write a one haiku per hour. I figured that I would have enough time to write a simple haiku and would also allow me fulfill my virtue. A couple examples of these haiku’s are:

The sun beating down

Yellow Brightness burns my eyes

Shades are the answer

 

The young boy is born,

Blossoming Heartache will choke,

Falls away from us

 

These aren’t that great by any means, but these haiku’s kept the creative juices flowing.

After school I did a bit more sketching and then I felt like I was successful in having a creative day.

 

Day 3, Assertiveness

 

Certainly not something I am lacking in, but it wouldn’t hurt to fine-tune it a bit more. On this day I wanted to do my best not to second guess myself and say how I felt. Sometimes I ignore things that people say for no particular reason, but today if someone said something that offended me I was certainly not going to sit back and let it happen. My being assertive is not to offend people either, it is just to educate people. It really offends me when people use the word gay as a synonym for stupid and I catch myself not saying that to people at times because I don’t want to start an argument. I definitely think that not wanting to start an argument is a pretty stupid reason and I want to change that. So I did. I figured that this day would probably be my easiest, and it certainly was. I not only asserted myself whilst talking to people, but I also wrote a blog entry about same-sex marriage.

 

I had my ups and downs during these past few days, but I got a lot out of this project. Just the idea of improving on a virtue each day is something that I want to continue doing. Like it says in the Thoreau quote “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined”, I want to live life the way I want to. I want to be what I want to be and have confidence while I am at it. Refining and implementing these virtues can help me follow my dreams and live the life that I imagined.