How I Stumbled Across Universal Literacy

I acqui trigger-happy, through organism part of umteen discourses that, clear d avouchtu in ally, e rattlingthing connects. I had of all time heard the same thing, Graduate from a good college and point out a penny maintenance, and youll be happy and successful. Ha What a capitalistic, factory- produced, fairy tale to tell waxen children, I thought. Nope, I was smarter than that. I would be the one to take the road little travelledto go against the grain and hold expose my own smell the appearance I wanted to. After b bely graduating senior last school with a GEED (or a GEED equivalent weight actually ), I took off to LA to become a music-producer.I was going to be big. I chink the trade, worked inside multi- one million million dollar studios, and formed a band. I had It all figured out and I was going to how everybody that school was for fools. As with everything In biography. This Intoxicating success did non last. I began to obtain close tothing was missing . Here I was, living the dream that I had imagined for myself, and yet, I didnt look much fulfilment. Bills were stacking, the girlfriend was becoming distant, and the turmoil of living on my own easily began to degrade with each passing day.Soon, I could no longer make ample to afford living on my own. And so, I packed up and return family unit to the Bay Area. Life had defeated me, or so It felt, and I had to reevaluate what I wanted to do with mine. Thats when the unexpected happened I started going back to school again. I began taking courses seriously and I erudite that, non only was I pretty good at most of the stuff, I really akind it. I make that an hidden subject like calculus, could be applied to something even more obscure like computer programming. I as jointureeed lessons in swimming that helped me learn how to socialize.Hell, if I took an extensive course on rock-paper-scissors, I could find a hidden lesson that could retrieve true In a nonher study. I gu ess you could reckon I soft realized how to learn, rather than what to learn. After all, crowd together capital of Minnesota Gee writes in his paper, &1042owe is a matter of knowing how to go bad (go on) in detail social interactions (Discourse and Coloratura Studies in Reading, 196). at once I realized that I had a plethora of knowledge and life-experiences up my weapon already, navigating through new atomic number 18as in life began to be much more rise up-heeled and rewarding.An unexpected part of life had showed up In my life as swell up religion. If you had the reasons wrong with the Bible and how t present couldnt by chance be a God. Openness eased my stubbornness. I wanted to hear out what all these hatful in Christianity had to say. As I attended sermons, I checkered all Judgments at the door and listened. I remember the words of a tonic watcher I had in high school. He told us to empty our cupsto be ready to fill it with more knowledge. I found that what th ey preached in church was incontestablely applicable to somebody not apparitional at all.Instead of seeing the religion as a brain-washing cult, I began to understand it as a form of volunteer-work. These people were here for help, or to help. How could I speak negatively anymore about something that humans should be doing for each other? I kicked up a sense of humbleness from immersing myself in religious-discourse. It was not only Christianity that I researched. I started pouring my curiosities into Buddhism, Shamanism, and Islam. In all these religions, they teach a similar purpose healing. meliorate yourself, heal others, and heal the Universe.Within you, without you. We are all one, yet amazingly unique. All these Faceable-queues counterfeit babble started to make sense to me toilsome new ideas had given me a fulfillment that I Just could not describe. I felt like a scientist, and that my plain stitch of study had now been shifted to understanding life. The doors that p edantic and religious discourse opened for me was like staring into a hallway that had even more interesting and unique doors to be opened. That would neer have been available to me had I not looked in their direction and remained open.James Paul Gee puts it very dandifiedly, Analogously, one chiffonier deepen the insight by taking successively deeper views of what interpretation means (Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics, 540). At times, I roll in the hay still feel dejected, depressed, or Just plain inactive after having been through these types of situations in advance, some umpteen times worse, I learned that eventually, everything leave urn out okay againit has to. physics proves this, religion speaks of this, and there are sayings Im sure youve heard before like, the dawn is darkest before the day. Recognizing this helps me deal with the inevitable problems that we all share, and how to focusing out in a heavy way. A big part of life for me is music. I would not hav e traveled to LA with such reckless abandon, were it not for the passion and fuel that music provides me. I identified heavily with the punk-(counter) civilization during my teenage years. I still do, plainly again, with a new-fangled perspective on the community. Punks look daunting to a spile of people. They have messy hair, spikes in every direction on their clothing, and a penchant for destroying things.The irony is, these very people are often the ones who are insecure, bold, and most understanding. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, and some punks are Just dicks, but being surrounded by a culture of misfits where the majority of members inside felt they were not right for the mainstream discourse, led me to take a look at the way things were established. I saw a lot of paranoia in the community, and I had to face my own. let me explain. Paranoia, on one end of the spectrum, bum lead people to look at things like, in 1969, America staged the whole slug landing .Or that the Pope is really a lizard. nevertheless on the other end of the spectrum, realised naivet can lead people to believe that banks have your best interest in mind, or that marijuana causes death. Somewhere in between them is an inner-balance much like the yin and yang in Buddhism. I learned that I revealed when the people spreading an idea can learn to communicate well enough without pique anothers ideas. We must listen to others as well, and learn to be dead to change our own ideas. How can we do this? How can I be sure that the color red looks the same to me, as it does to you?And more importantly, how can we find a .. That reading and penning cannot be separated from consensus? Gee argues, speaking, listening, and interacting (Reading as Situated Language A cognitively Perspective, 714). He makes a rather elegant point here in that it is not a matter of street smarts vs hold in smarts, rather, it is a marriage of the two that is infallible for communication. Eventua lly, everything connects was said by Charles Names, a designer. An app on the phone called, Dots, A Game or so Connecting, dis assembles his quote prominently.Each time I play this crippled, I think about the many ways to accomplish one naive goal connect the dots. There are ups and downs, lefts and rights. But there are in addition boxes and zigzags. The more unique ways you find to connect the dots, the easier and more fun the game becomes. Learning many tools from hands-on life- experiences greatly increases the fulfillment I feel for them. They gain my confidence, encourage me to eat healthier, to do well in school, and to live happier with family. You can say Vie stopped rebelling like I used to, and to that, I would have to agree.But Im in addition rebelling against ignorance. Im rebelling against preconceived molds society can coif on us, and Im rebelling against egoism. Its a never-ending pursuit, but its much more preferable to never pursuing. James Paul Gee says, . .The skipper discourse is not Just the sum of its parts, it is something also over and above them (Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics, 537). possibly once weve connected all the dots, we are still not done. We may never be done, and to me, that is an exciting thought.