While reading Julie Beck’s “Life’s Stories” article, I found myself relating to a lot of the quotes and points she was making. In the second and third pages, she writes a lot about how the brains of children and adults are different. It was very interesting and it was something I had never really found my mind wondering about. In my psychology class, we are learning about developmental psychology, so this whole article had a connection between the text and the world. Developmental psychology is very intriguing because the brain of a child is so different from the brain of a grown person, yet, we are so similar. This article basically reflected everything we are going to be learning about.
“Having redemption themes in one’s life story is generally associated with greater well-being, while contamination themes tend to coincide with poorer mental health.” I had to read this quote over twice because it holds so much context. This reveals a lot about a person’s well being. If you had something negative happen in your life and you think about it all the time, you are not going to be happy. There is a positive outlook on everything, and thinking of the positives will make you a happier person. However the person decides to think will hugely impact their mental health.
“As college literature class discussion sections taught me, you can see anything as a metaphor if you try hard enough.” This quote made me laugh a little bit because we just finished talking about metaphors in class. Metaphors are so important, period. This article isn’t even about metaphors, however, the author still discusses metaphors and explains their importance to the topic. I agree completely with this quote because like I wrote in my essay, metaphors are so powerful and versatile.
“A life story is written in chalk, not ink, and it can be changed.” I had to include this quote in this post because it is so inspiring. I agree 100% with this quote because you are in control of your life, and you hold all the power in the world to change what happens with your life. You can’t change the past, but you can change how you react to the past. This relates to the world because so many people live their life regretting something that happened years ago. That person has so much potential in their life, but instead, they live their life dreading on the past.
I really liked this article because it held so much knowledge, and it didn’t get boring. The studies were interesting, and there were so many things that I connected to as a reader. This is definitely going to be a great resource when we do our narrative projects.
I found your comments on the piece really thoughtful. I had the same reaction as you when reading the quote about turning anything into a metaphor. Just like you, I found it funny that this quote directly correlated to everything we were reading in the last unit. I also used the quote about life written in chalk, however I interpreted it a little differently. Like you, I completely agree that you have control over your own story and the future, however I focused more on the past with this quote. I said that I disagreed with this quote, simply because you can’t change the past, you can only learn from it. I really like how you said that you can change how you view the past. I didn’t think of this immediately, but it is so true. While you can’t change the events of the past, you can make changes to how the past impacts your present and future.