A Paper: Who I want to Be

[MatthiasMan]

I'm really exhausted after writing this paper.  I put so much emotion and work into this paper so please read it if you are willing.  I don't really care what grade I get on it I just feel like I needed to write this so bad.

The prompt for the paper is "We hear when we are younger, what do we want to be when we grow up. Instead of 'what' you want to be when you grow up, define the 'who' you want to be."

If you could offer any kind of affirmation of what I'm feeling I'd be very grateful.

The Digital Man and the Man

         For many of us, we determine who we are by our surroundings.  What job we have, our salary, social status, our friends, the car we drive, size of our house.  That list could never end.  However, when one seeks worldly desires, he/she often becomes like them: empty.  Modern man: from the Industrial Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement and finally, to today's digital world, it is called the "progress of man."  However, where does the result of that progress show itself?  Still, this world clings to hunger, inequality, bigotry, and every other kind of evil, which were present from the beginning of time.  In today's digital age, men become consumed by their electric creations, becoming like robots.  Man tries creating life by building machines in his image but himself transforms into a machine—no longer human.  The man I want to become is a man of men.  A man among men leaves behind the skyscrapers and buzzing city.  He escapes to the real world.  Only in fleeing our cybernated community to nature does a digital man become a real man.

   Each morning, I rise from my bed with groggy eyes and numb limbs.  Immediately, I check my iPhone for the clock—5:55 AM.  Despite the same rising hour, five days a week (sometimes four), every week, nine out of twelve months each year for the past eleven years, the need to assure myself that time passed through the night addicts my eyes to the artificial screen.  Instead of addicting myself to the morning sunrise and fresh, outside air, which a natural man enjoys with a smile on his face, I find myself staring—with dark bags under my eyelids and a frown on my cheeks—at a boring array of pixels.  With each passing morning, I become more like those pixels: artificial and manufactured. 

   Even "writing" this essay, every press of a key drags me closer to a digital black hole.  The precious time spent flexing my fingers to catch grades turns to waste.  Typing and writing is the difference between crawling and flying.  In my home, all my breaths suck in the ionized air, never silent, but always clicking and scratching from the droning fan of the computer.  I am surrounded by electricity like a bird in a cage.  I dream of the crisp air of the Great Plains.  There in the grassy lands and forests of the East, a man can not waste his time.  In the big cities, time controls us.  Schedules, appointments, due dates, and job shifts govern us.  How does a man break free?  Men are captured, not truly free from the constricting boundaries of the increasingly digital, carbon copied planet until they forsake their societies.  Who I want to be is the man who flees the city and befriends time through knowing his mother—Mother Earth.  If Mother Earth thought TV's and lights necessary, they'd be a natural given. 

   Rush's song "Subdivisions," came out in the early 80's.  Neil Peart's beautifully crafted lyrics describe the dilemma of every teenager in the United States: "Any escape might help to smooth/ The unattractive truth/ But the suburbs have no charms to soothe/ The restless dreams of youth."  What is the digital man's escape?  For teenage boys, video games.  For teenage girls, social media.  However, chasing the material shenanigans which capitalism claims are the "progress of man" leave the digital man unfulfilled, voided inside.  I can no longer live that way—my heart compels me.  The man whom I need to be is the man standing proud on top of the prairie hill, the wind under his wide-spread arms and freedom flying like eagle's wings.

[Kitsune]

I think your paper raises a lot of interesting points. Personally I'd love to debate them, but due to your exhaustion  won't post my response unless you want it.

I think your paper is very insightful. Good job.

[Skyblade]

This is an insightful essay, promising and gripping from beginning to end. There are a handful of eloquent lines, and your ideas are some that we all nod at - yet never stop to consider like you do.

Paragraph 3 is the strongest section; it does an excellent job of revealing a problem of humanity.

I'd be happy to see this polished and maybe even expanded.

[MatthiasMan]

Thank you both for such beautiful comments! Unfortunately, I got a D on this essay.  

@Kitsune Feel free to post any response.  This is an open discussion.

[Skyblade]

If I could talk to this teacher, I would

I really do like it And I hope you post more writings.

[Luftwaffles]

How is this worth a D?

I don't know what the criteria was here (or, more accurately, how it was judged) but this is far better than that, mate. FAR better.

[MatthiasMan]

Once again, thanks for all the support! <3

I think the teachers who read my essays don't really understand what it means to be a teenager today.  They are all part of the last couple generations, so the things I say and the images I throw in their mean absolutely nothing to them.  Eh, no writer or poet or artist is as famous as when he's dead.  I guess it'll be a long time till some people can follow what I wrote.