Joliet Central High School

Joliet, Illinois

Teacher: Mr. Reilly

 

Personal Responsibility As Easy As 1-2-3

by Dan Lowry

Grade 11

Age:16

           

The role of personal responsibility in improving the quality of life in our communities today. Something so simple I chuckle as I read it. It isn’t that hard to figure out people,  if no one accepts their responsibilities and no one tries to improve the quality of life then it’s just not going to get better.  Personal responsibility is the single most important role in our efforts to raise the quality of life in our country.  That’s it guys.  There’s no fancy smancy algebraic equation,  no two hour long speech on why we struggle to improve our lives,  it’s right in front of our noses.  Something so simple it will make geniuses cry. 

           

It is impossible to improve life over night. There’s no easy way out of it.  It will take time. It’d be nice if someone could wave a wand and taa-daa everything is better. Of course that would be nice but sorry guys, there’s only one way to do it. Get into the game, grab life by the horns and play the game as hard as you can.  Sure you’ll strike out a couple of times but you can’t hit home runs unless you step into the batter’s box.  Everyone must fail in some way in order to succeed. We must strive to be the best we can be or else we’ll only be living a fragment of a person. Life is a fight, a 12 round battle and if we get knocked around a little bit in the early rounds then we have to get back in there with blazing fists. If you don’t try to do your best in life then you have no right to complain about how bad your life is.  These people make me sick!  Come on people,  it’s you that are dragging the rest of our society into unhappiness and the only way we can achieve a higher quality of life as a whole is to take blame for our faults and fix our own problems. 

           

This last statement brings me to my next point, learn from your mistakes! Each and everyone of us could improve society so much if we could just correct ourselves as we go on.  If you’re wrong admit it and then make sure it doesn’t happen again. Once again it all boils into the role of the individual.

           

Take advantage of your opportunities. Perhaps the reason we struggle so much is because we are too naive to try something new. This is one area of life that I personally need to improve on.  If the door to success opens, jump in. After all it probably won’t be open long and just think how happy you’ll be once you walk through that doorway. I’m reminded of the chorus line of a song from a local band that really touches on this subject and I would like to share it with you.  It goes a little something like this, ‘Do you have the right to want to live?  But keep in mind you only get what you give.  Get your foot in the door and stand tall, but don’t slip because you’ll slip and you’ll fall. So give your all...give your all.’  Let me interpret to you what this means to me. ‘Do you have the right to want to live?’ Living is success, you have the right to determine how you live your life.  ‘But keep in mind you only get what you give.’ There are no short cuts, you will receive what you deserve in life if you work hard at your goals.  ‘Get your foot in the door and stand tall.’  When opportunity knocks answer it and give it your best shot. ‘But don’t slip because you’ll slip and you’ll fall.’ Don’t hesitate to seize your opportunities because if you miss they could be gone forever. ‘So give your all,  give your all.’ Give life all you have to give it, don’t die giving only half of what you got. Be someone important. If you do all this you’ll be improving your quality of life and if everyone does  this then the quality of life in America will improve drastically.

 

So there you have it my friends. The key to improving the quality of life in our great country’s communities all boils down to one. Improving is going to take a long time but the only way to succeed at it is to go one person at a time. You must not forget that you are the only one that can make your life better, not your next door neighbor, not the government, and definitely not your barber Joe. As long as we remember this there will always be a chance that the quality of life will improve but once again it is all up to the individuals of this nation. 

 

  ^*Excerpt from “RP-3” by Five Point O.  Found on demo disk “Five Pointe O”

 

Essay “A” Questions

 

Q1. Society in America no longer feels it has the need to invest in long term engagements even though marriage definitely improves the moral inside of a person. I believe that everyone has at least one person that they are chemically and physically attracted to. In other words certain people are meant for each other.  In America we invest in marriage on a more personal level. In places like Manus they invest in marriage in capitol. I think that it’s nonsense to exchange goods at a wedding ceremony but if that’s what works for them then that’s how it should be.

 

Q2. The ten people that I interviewed for the this question responded with this: 

1) Married 7 years - 1 marriage - Trust and honesty are what keep couples like us together. 

 

2) Married 17 years - 1 marriage - Love works both ways and you must both love for a happy marriage. 

 

3) Married 12 years - 1 marriage - As long as you’re committed to your spouse and committed to your marriage then you’ll live happily. 

 

4) Married 42 years - 1 marriage - You just have to have trust and faith in your husband.

 

5) Married 12 years - 1 marriage - Always be there for him or her and hang in there when times are rough. 

 

6) Married 9 years - 2 marriages - You have to work things out and learn to give the benefit of the doubt. 

 

7) Married 58 years - 1 marriage -  As long as there is love there will be a happy relationship. 

 

8) Married 58 years - 1 marriage - Just be honest and be yourself and if can last 58 years together then I guess you were meant to be. 

 

 9)Married 24 years - 1 marriage - You’ve got to care and be there at all times for your spouse. 

 

10) Married 16 years - 1 marriage - Love is the only thing that can keep a marriage together.  Once that is there then that is all you need.

             

3.According to Richard Eckersley our societies collective goal should be to dematerialize society without reducing the quality in life.  In other words he’s saying that we should cut back on the little things we worry about everyday.  We need to simplify our lives while still keeping them in order and control.

           

4.A goal that I would like to see in my community is to have all people of different ethnic backgrounds to put aside their differences and unite for the common good of our community.  In my hometown of Joliet, Illinois we have what seems to be two different communities in the same city.  Much like in the mid-1800’s when our country was divided by the North and South our town is divided by East and West.  We cannot let our town breakdown into war like we let our country in 1861.  I call for the citizen’s of each side to propose a plan to bring our city together.  Then we should have members of the individual districts meet and compromise on these proposals and mend them into a plan to get us back on the same track with the same goals.

 

5. I believe that the toy industry is taking over the role of the parent in the home.  Since parents aren’t around for their kids that much now a days kids are being taught by their smart, humanoid toys.  They have dolls that talk and toy makers have it say what they want the children to hear and since the parents aren’t there to teach kids themselves they learn from a piece of plastic instead of their own flesh and blood. 

           

6. According to Kathleen Smith lawyers are helpful in our democracy based society because they protect us from the danger in tyranny of the majority. Our diversity makes lawyers helpful because our heterogeneity brings us all more conflict and we need lawyers to mediate in our debates.  Once we are a wealthy nation we can afford agencies to protect and preserve our health and the longevity of our lives. Lawyers then in return make sure that the regulations of these agencies are followed. A larger size community has many large scale transactions and lawyers help to do what economists call economics of sale.  These factors are what make lawyers helpful in our community.

           

7. I prefer the idea of regulations over punitive damages to change bad practices. The idea of regulations benefits everyone in our society while punitive damages seem to reward people for finding flaws in something.

           

8. Society would benefit from the retirement of baby boomers by having more programs set up for the elderly,  by setting up a chain of elderly entrepreneurs, and by having these entrepreneurs offer services to younger families.

           

9. I think that President Clinton’s Anti-Poverty plan will work because I believe that if companies will receive a 15% tax credit for investing in poor areas then they will start business in these areas. Another reason is that since the government is putting more money into CDFI they will repay them with more risky loans to poor people.  Another reason I believe poverty will drop is that more and more families keep lifting themselves out of poverty and with a little boost everyone else will catch up, and I believe that this plan is that little boost.

           

10.  Three things that Tom Lewis and Truett Cathy have in common are their generosity and care towards their communities, their intense commitment to their values, and their desire to succeed.