In the every-day world I am so caught up in producing that I have a difficult time trying to find a time and way to actually think about my life. I find it difficult to find time to actually live and enjoy life. Our society emphasizes the finished product, the final essay, the test, so we sometimes forget about the process which we follow to produce the object. Usually the process is actually more important to learning and living than the product made. I usually concentrate so much on the final essay, the final test, the final grade that I forget about the steps necessary to make it interesting, to give life and being to the writing. I find that the product, which is what I was concentrating on, becomes worse because I never really lived the process, so my whole design and plan backfired. I am so caught up in planning tomorrow that I live tomorrow before I finish living today.

In my concentration on the future I have difficulties in finding and processing current data. I trouble making my own decision and not following other people. Just yesterday, after watching a movie with my sister, I actually found myself delaying my decision and thinking about the meanings in the movie until I heard her state her opinion on it. I often find myself doing such after a movie, or play, or any other type of entertainment. I have found that I like to avoid conflict in any way possible, even if it means denying myself. I am not allowing myself to show itself, instead letting others plaster an image over me, and this has caused me to feel a loss of self, to feel a desire to become a person I know I am not.

Not knowing my true identity causes myself to wonder who I am, to desire to find my true being. Strangely enough, I have been trying to find myself in religion, but I have been concentrating too much on the information, memorizing facts but not really thinking about what it all really means. I have not been applying it to myself, finding how it relates to me, or searching for whether I am living out my life as my religion says I should. I have not found a transformation in religion. Instead I find a change in who I am and how I view life in the ancient philosophers, in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Studying their ideas has helped me start to find out who I am and brings me back to religion, viewing it in a new way and using it to find out who I am.

A big resistance in me to find out who I am is my ego. My ego is made of pride and determination that I am the best. I'll start with my school. I think that many SLUH students are proud of SLUH. I find myself sneering at students from other schools such as Vianny, Chaminade, CBC, and DeSmet, believing that I am a better person just because I am from SLUH and immediately believing that I am smarter than them. Both of these assumptions are probably wrong in most cases. I know very little about certain aspects of life and education. My very attitude shows that I know nothing about who they really are. I also notice that I often talk to others about how advanced I am in certain classes and my advantages in math. This causes me to not search for who they are and prevent me from seeing others personalities beneath their classes, making me not see the reality about my own life.