1st Week of Presentations

The main thing I learned throughout the first group of presentations is that human beings are capable of enduring extreme tragedy and coming back even stronger after their hardships. For example in Lone Survivor the main character watches his best friends and squad members die, then has to go back to the hallowed ground where they died to retrieve the bodies. I've never even watched someone die, let alone someone I cared so much about. Despite this, he has the strength to write a moving memoir about all his sensitive memories so that we can learn about what it's like.  Similarly, in Two Kisses for Maddy, the father experiences the nightmare of losing the love of his life and is torn between that grief and the joy of his daughter being born. He is able to see the light his daughter can bring to his life and to use that to get beyond losing his wife. He allowed his daughter to make him happy and like the author of Lone Survivor, writing about his feelings and memories helps him heal and made him the best he could be in the face of adversity. 

Although these two memoirs had terrible things happen to them, Stephen Hawking in My Brief History and Ishmael Beah in A Long Way Gone reveal personal demons they had to overcome to be who they are today. Hawking has dealt with divorce, debilitating disease, and inability to easily portray the complex things running through his mind. His theories have nonetheless revolutionized the way people study physics in this day. Luckily he is able to fabricate virtual representation of his theories through futuristic computer software, but I imagine it would get very frustrating to have such a powerful mind and such a weak body. Beah had to forgive himself and forget for a moral sin. He had to live with the fact he had killed so many people, even if it wasn't his fault. Instead of hating his nation and living with resentment for what he was put through at such a young age, he dedicates his life to bettering that of those he can relate to, those still living the horror he once did. This is the most sincere sign of forgiveness; wanting to change the situation and help others.