Free Essays on Journey

For most of my life I have been horribly afraid of the dark. I have, for as long as I can recall, slept with a night light burning brightly in the socket next to my bed. I'm not comfortable sharing my total reason with many people, only my boyfriend and two people I have considered best friends really know. One main reason I am afraid of the dark is because without my glasses or contacts on, my vision in the dark is almost none. Even with them in the dark I haven't got the ability to see things in any kind of focus. Another reason may be that I have a severely overactive imagination (which is okay until the sun goes down). My boyfriend and some of my closest friends love the dark. They love the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you have your eyes open in a totally dark room, seeing nothing with open eyes. This has always driven me nuts, I hate not seeing with my eyes open. They began to pester me, tell me I could get rid of this fear, that in the future it would be good to not freak out if the power goes out. I brushed them aside, saying that I could be afraid of the dark if I wanted, humoring my paranoia harmed no one. But after a while of them whining about me with my flashlight, I decided that I could break this "irrational fear of the absence of light". I started simply, shutting off the light while I was in a group of people. Then I began to shut off the light for short periods of time in my room at night. Then I took a huge step I shut off my night light and tried to go to sleep. Lying in bed I listened to sounds, opening my eyes when one startled me. I did this several times, closing my eyes again quickly against that horrible fuzzy feeling. Then I began to pick up my glasses to check the time every two minutes. I pulled the covers over my head when I heard the goblins crawl out from under my bed. Then pinned the blankets under my pillow when I heard the vampire in my closet sneak out. When I heard the spidergnomes come... Free Essays on Journey Free Essays on Journey For most of my life I have been horribly afraid of the dark. I have, for as long as I can recall, slept with a night light burning brightly in the socket next to my bed. I'm not comfortable sharing my total reason with many people, only my boyfriend and two people I have considered best friends really know. One main reason I am afraid of the dark is because without my glasses or contacts on, my vision in the dark is almost none. Even with them in the dark I haven't got the ability to see things in any kind of focus. Another reason may be that I have a severely overactive imagination (which is okay until the sun goes down). My boyfriend and some of my closest friends love the dark. They love the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you have your eyes open in a totally dark room, seeing nothing with open eyes. This has always driven me nuts, I hate not seeing with my eyes open. They began to pester me, tell me I could get rid of this fear, that in the future it would be good to not freak out if the power goes out. I brushed them aside, saying that I could be afraid of the dark if I wanted, humoring my paranoia harmed no one. But after a while of them whining about me with my flashlight, I decided that I could break this "irrational fear of the absence of light". I started simply, shutting off the light while I was in a group of people. Then I began to shut off the light for short periods of time in my room at night. Then I took a huge step I shut off my night light and tried to go to sleep. Lying in bed I listened to sounds, opening my eyes when one startled me. I did this several times, closing my eyes again quickly against that horrible fuzzy feeling. Then I began to pick up my glasses to check the time every two minutes. I pulled the covers over my head when I heard the goblins crawl out from under my bed. Then pinned the blankets under my pillow when I heard the vampire in my closet sneak out. When I heard the spidergnomes come... Free Essays on Journey Journey’s come in many different forms, some being lengthy in duration while others may be just hours long. On occasion, one’s path to self-knowledge may be found in doing the same things as one used to do in a whole new environment and finding that the ways of the past are inadequate for the ways of the present. This concept is shown in the untitled narrative by Sara Chase, where the discovery is that her study habits from high school no longer correlate with what she will need to do to be successful in college. Failure is a common fear for almost everyone. It is something that we try to avoid as much as possible. In the narrative, the author panics when thoughts of failure flood into her head. The author states â€Å"†¦the confidence that I acquired early slipping away and fear filling its place.† â€Å"All this over one little question?† we ask ourselves. This made me wonder: Is what we strive for as the vision of self-knowledge actually perfection or is self-knowledge realized when we finally accept the fact that perfection is unattainable? The crucial element, in my opinion, was not a paragraph or a single sentence; it was one word that was repeated numerous times throughout the narrative: confidence. Is confidence what leads us to self-knowledge- the confidence to continue on, to try new ways when old ways fail? Is confidence a pre-indicator of a successful journey or can you claim self-knowledge without possessing confidence? The past serves as a useful reference for the present and the future. In this case, the past could not compete at the same level as the present. But this fact was only realized after failure, disappointment, and self-pity, as the author states. The past, in someway, develops who you are and what experiences and life lessons we take from the past and use in the present create a future that brings us closer to self-knowledge. This narrative is like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight i...