by Larik Sonfar

Created on: May 22, 2008

Sometime around the age of eight, the docile and obedient nature of my young self began to give way to a persona that was more rebellious and outspoken. Due to some reason no longer known to me, I had begun to find myself energized by the ideals of such things as justice, or from a more pessimistic view point, self-interest. Perhaps my long awaited ability to communicate in English had awoken in me a passion for conversation, or perhaps my ego had been inflated with an overblown sense of self-importance from watching too many television heroes. In any event, I would no longer accede unconditionally to my parents' demands. When my mom tried to fill my holiday schedule with the gruesome products of her newly written math homework generator computer program, I took the reins of justice into my own hands and decided to dig in for a long battle.

Unfortunately, grade-schoolers are rarely on equal footing with their parents, and after my fleeting but valiant resistance degenerated into mere sobbing, I found myself soundly defeated. Time and again however, I defended myself against perceived infringements on my liberty, whether they took the form of extra assignments or denials to frolic with friends. With each encounter, my tactics became more varied and more irksome. I had even found a seemingly inbuilt ability to argue incessantly. Consequently, every passing confrontation became more heated, until eventually, my parents and I could hardly talk to each other without screaming.

I still found myself unable to win these entanglements and so I began to notice, that as much as I refused to believe it, my strategy of stubbornness was a failure. The more the anger escalated, the less likely I was to attain my particular goals. One night, fuming after an unsatisfactory verdict following a particularly bitter argument with my parents, I couldn't, or at least refused, to go to sleep. I lay in bed for some hours, doing nothing but radiating my anger into the surrounding environment of inanimate objects. The thought that perhaps constructive solution making would serve me better than wallowing in anger spontaneously flitted into my mind and so reluctantly, bit by bit, like two lovers parting hands, I let go of the debilitating anger clouding my mind.

I opened a notebook and poured into it the entirety of my many grievances. It feltgood. The flimsy paper seemed to be shouldering some of my discontent for me. With each stroke, I felt my sense of injury crystallize more, but at

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>