Journey Story__JoSe__So This is My Journey Story…

It was supposed to be a typical Saturday morning when Jimmy decided to go meet up with his friends at Faraway Park. He was following his usual routine, playing on the swings, chasing around the girls that would often come up to him say hi and then take off running, meet up with his friends from school and argue about how much Pokemon was better then Yughio. Except this time, before he made his way back home, he passed by a bush and heard laughter. So he snuck up to take a look, it turned out that there some other kids about his age crouched in a circle. The thing that caught his attention was the flicking of a flame. As he got closer he finally saw what it was, it was fire the one thing his parents had always told him not to play with for some strange reason. He never really understood why, and now he questioned why couldn’t he play with it? There were these other kids playing with it, so it must be ok if he did to.

After seeing fire for the first time, he made the decision to try and get as close as he could to that memorizing flame. As the days went by he began hanging out with them. They poured gas onto little animals and then light them on fire. They loved to torture other kids for no reason. Since this was all new to him he didn’t know whether to decide, if what they were doing was good or bad. Seeing how he didn’t want to lose his new friends, he never questioned them. Then the day finally came when they took him up to an empty lot on the suburbs of the town, to see if the was ready to start handling the fire on his own. They told him that in order for them to trust him more, he had to pass three tests. The first one had to do with him capturing the first animal that crossed the lot and a drench it in lighter fluid then light it. The seconded one had him stealing a bunch of matches and anything flammable that he could find as a form of payment to his new friends. Lastly he had to get a bag full of dog poop, then put it on the door step of the neighborhood's watch house, and light it on fire.

The fascination with fire became an obsession. At times he would steal matches from his parents and run off to enjoy his prize. For a while the sight of fire brought joy to his life. But as time went on he began to think of ways on how to make the fire more powerful and full filling. He experimented with every single thing that said flammable on the label. Every day that he met up with his pyro buddies they would swap ideas and stories of the things they had done. As always Jimmy could never match their stories.

So one afternoon he invited them back to the empty lot where they had first introduced him to the glorious fire. He planned to show them all that he could light the greatest fire they had ever seen. He gathered a bunch of dry brush and set it next to what appeared to be an abandon motor home, pour some lighter fluid on it and then lit it. The chemicals from the lighter fluid burn a beautiful red, and orange, and for brief moments would suddenly change to a blue and green.

What they didn’t seem to notice at the time when the brush was burning, was that the heat had begun to ignite the wall of the motor home. Everyone began to panic, but in a split second his so called friends abandoned him with out warning. Jimmy was left there gazing at the fire. And in that moment he began to think about how simple his life use to be when he had no knowledge of fire. He wanted to be playing on the swing, feeling the breeze instead of the scorching heat.

Then there was a voice coming from with in the motor home, it was an old lady calling for help. “HELP, please some one help me!," screamed the old lady. “Aww man what did I get my self in to, this is why my parents always told me to stay away from fire. But I can’t leave her in there, but if I stay I'll get caught," he thought. He could have left but he knew that what he had started was wrong and had to take responsibility for his actions. So he raced in, and led the old lady to safety.” Thank you so much young man, I wish that there could be more kids like you around this neighborhood. Lately there have been a couple of kids who where constantly playing with fire up here. I am glad that you weren't one of those kids otherwise, I would have been dead by now," cried the old women. The whole crazy experience he just witnessed left a strong enough expression on his mind that he vowed never to play with fire ever again. When the fire men asked him if he knew what had started the fire, all he said was, “it was a bunch of crazy kids that ran off as soon as it started.” After that he never played with fire ever again.

ESSAY__JoSe__Siddhartha

In the story Siddhartha, written by Herman Hesse a young Brahmin's son, Siddhartha is beginning his own journey in search of enlightenment. The journey consists of four stages: innocence, initiation, chaos, and resolution. As he spends his life looking for ways to reach nirvana he goes through rebirth many times, each time learning something new. You can’t reach nirvana and understand everything from lectures and book, its something that one has learned from experiences.

When Siddhartha decides to leave the illustrious one, Buddha, is another step he takes in his journey, because he learns that his teachings have certain flaws in them and that Buddha himself didn’t achieve nirvana through teachings. "The teachings of the enlightened one Buddha embrace much, they teach much--how to live righteously, how to avoid evil. But there is one thing that is clear, worthy instruction does it not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the illustrious one himself experience…”/ (Hesse 34). Hesse shows how Siddhartha is able to look beyond the teachings and confront Buddha about what he thinks about his teachings. He comments on how all they teach is how to avoid many evils but never on what he experienced in those few moments of nirvana. “You have done your own seeking, in your own way, through thought, through meditation, through knowledge, through enlightenment,”/ (Hesse 33). In this passage he acknowledges the fact that, Buddha in fact did not reach enlightenment through teachings, but through hours of meditation, deep thoughts, and by gaining an abundant amount of knowledge.

Siddhartha is by the river sitting with Vesudeva and they both finally reached nirvana, just by listening to the river running. “When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or the laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole. The unity then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om- perfection” (Hesse 136). Here Hesse speaks about how all the voices that Siddhartha had heard in his head had finally gotten in to unison. No longer did he feel tied to one single voice and longer fought with his destiny. “From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events…(Hesse 136). Now Hesse speaks about how after so many years of searching Siddhartha finally realizes that he was fighting himself the whole time. He didn’t feel the need to gamble or to fit in, the need to be like the ordinary people. Everything was in its rightful place in the world to be able to experience that hour of nirvana, enlightenment.

You can’t reach nirvana and understand everything from lectures and books, its something that one has tolerant from experiences. That’s exactly what Siddhartha had to go through to finally be a peace with him self and his surroundings. By leaving the Gotoma Buddha, and by simply taking the time to understand the things flow in life, like a river. Now he has finally reached the stage of his journey, resolution.

jennifer carpio





The metamorphosis

The novel the metamorphosis is about a vermin named Gregor and his life. His life is a journey that has several steps from innocence to resolution. Gregor was a regular human who woke up one day as a vermin and couldn’t do anything he usually did as a human.


The first step or stage of Gregor’s life or journey would be his innocence. Maybe gregor wasn’t exactly happy but he was human and worked hard everyday to pay back a debt that he owed to his family. He didn’t necessarily like his job which was always on the road and meeting different people everyday where he wouldn’t be able to maintain any relationships. But was dedicated, always woke up early enough to catch his ride to work. He had set a goal to finish about 5 to 6 years of hard work and finish paying off the debt.


The second step would be initiation where he realized that he was going to stay a vermin. His human body was corrupted and he had many tiny legs and he just couldn’t function right. Then when his family start to realize that his voice sounds like an animal and that he had no reason not to go to work, gregor felt useless and ashamed.


The third step was chaos. Gregor just wanted to go back to being human. He just felt that even how hard and how long working was so miserable for him that he would want that back. Gregor was offered food but he wouldn’t eat it not even his favorite foods. His family tried to take care of him by cleaning up after him but they seemed also as if they cared about gregors emotions or thoughts.


The last step is resolution and gregor was just so depressed and knew that he was unwilling to work or do anything useful and he died. These four steps of gregors journey is what he went throught but human or not in the end gregor was treated the same and his family felt about him wither way.