Two Cars

Ignoring the fact that the situation with Vern and Grace is both highly unlikely and somewhat disturbing, I believe that the car Vern is driving is Vern’s Volvo. Even though the car he is driving is no longer the car that he bought 20 years ago, the car is still his Volvo, assuming that all of the new parts are Volvo parts. The individual parts are not the car, but all of them together make up Vern’s car. The car does not become something else just because one part is replaced. Even if one part is replaced hundreds of times, it still remains the same. As long as only the one part is changed, the car stays the same, because the one part that was replaced did not make up the car. This new vehicle is Vern’s car, or at least what Vern’s car has become.

The other car can’t be Vern’s Volvo because it is not actually a car. In the same way that a pile of boards is not a house, the other car is nothing more than a pile of parts that came from Vern’s car. It can’t even be considered Vern’s car because Vern can’t treat it like a car. Can Vern drive the heap of parts? Can he make insurance payments on it? Can he hold a title for it? Of course he can’t, partly because he doesn’t even know it exists, but mostly because it is not even enough of a car to be considered his Volvo.

The heap of parts may be the parts from the car Vern originally bought, but they no longer make up his car. While the car he drives now does not contain any original parts, to Vern, it is his car and the only car he has known for the past 20 years. If he were asked which his car was, he would most likely say that the car he is driving is his Volvo. After all, he has no memories with the pile of parts while the other car is special to him. It is the car he has driven everywhere, the car he filled with gas, and the car that he had to take to Grace’s Garage several times over the 20 years.

It Takes One to Know One

Self knowledge is something that has people have obsessed over for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks believed that in order to understand humanity, one would have to understand himself first. Self knowledge is very important in order to improve as a human, because if you know what your weaknesses are, you will be able to fix them. If you don’t work to try to fix your weaknesses, you will never get any better as a person and you will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

I think my biggest weakness is my penchant for brevity. I feel that I often over simplify things and have trouble elaborating. Even though I might have an answer to an English essay that makes sense, I will only give the bare minimum required to get by. Even though this is a problem that I have had for a very long time, I have not tried to do much about it. I have tried to give more details for papers, which is the biggest complaint that my English teachers have had, but it never seems to be enough. Because I understand what I want to say, it feels like the person reading the paper will too and I do not feel the need to put in all of the details.

I feel that my greatest strength is my intelligence. I have been able to get out of many tricky situations using my intelligence that would have ended badly otherwise. I think that while I have other strengths, the one that has the most practical applications in my life has to be my intelligence. My intelligence is also my strength that I am the most proud of, because I have been able to rely on it and had to work less. While I know that I could be working harder and doing even better in school and on tests, I feel that since I can just rely on what I have and still do well, there is no need to do the extra work.

Reflecting on one’s own weaknesses and strengths is difficult because it involves realizing that no one is perfect. It is hard to think about your imperfections because it makes you feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. Thinking about your strengths can also be tough because it is hard to do while remaining humble. Having to think about my strengths and weaknesses made me feel slightly uncomfortable because I do not like to think about myself all that often, especially thinking about myself in front of others. Even though I have had to do this recently in the form of an English assignment, it did not make it any less uncomfortable. Talking about yourself is always unpleasant because it forces you to deal with aspects of your character that you may not want to face.

Why Don't You Get A Job?

“Get a job” is the best, if not most practical advice, I have ever received. Sure it may sound harsh, but to me, it makes perfect sense. One day when I came home from school, I learned that my mom had gotten the new car she had been talking about getting. Naturally, I was quite excited even though I do not enjoy driving and the car is for her, not me. However, I was not as happy when I remembered that our insurance rates also went up because we had gotten a new car and because my brother and I were new drivers. My mom had told us that we would have to start contributing $50 a month to help cover the increase. With my flawed sense of the value of money, I thought it would be easy to do this. After all, I thought, video games cost about $50 and I have plenty of those, so there would be no problem. I later realized several flaws in my plan. First, before this, my average weekly income was somewhere around 5 dollars. This means that each month, I would lose $25-30 paying for the insurance. Second, I did not get a new video game every month with the money that I had earned during that month. It takes a while to earn the money to buy video games, especially on $5 a week. Third, I would not have enough money to cover both the rise in insurance rates and video games, which could lead to some hard decisions. Then, my mom gave told me something that I will never forget. She told me that I should get a job. Besides work in the summer on my grandma’s farm, I had never had a paying job before. I thought about it was very excited. I could hardly imagine what I could do with all of the money I would earn from my new job. Actually, I could imagine it, and it involved paying for insurance and video games. After applying to several stores that I wanted to work at like Gamestop and Borders, my mom persuaded me to apply to other places, like Christmas Tree Shop and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. After searching unsuccessfully for a while, my mom volunteered me to mow the lawn of someone from our church. At first, I objected, but after remembering my predicament, I hesitantly agreed. Having mown that lawn, and another one that I was also volunteered for, weekly for a few months, I can easily say that it is good to have a job, because while working, I learned that there is never anything wrong with having more money.

Mean Everything to Nothing

There is no concrete way to tell whether or not a life has meaning or value. These can only be decided about yourself when looking back on your life. No one else can determine whether or not a life was worth living because everyone has different morals and beliefs. This is why the death panel debate is terrible: a random group of people has no idea whether or not another person’s life has meaning. I think that people can only decide whether or not their own life has meaning, and it does not have to be done from their deathbed. Every day, we need to just think if we like how our life is going and if we think our life has been worth it. This way, we can make whatever small changes we want to make on a daily basis instead of having a huge meltdown later in life when we decide that we want to take our life in a completely new direction. There is no concrete purpose in life. Life is whatever we make of it.

At the end of my life, there are several things I would like to have. First of all, I would like to have a great family, a loving wife, and possibly some awesome kids. It would be great to be able to look back at my life and see people who loved me. Humanity in general would benefit if everyone was loved. Next, I would want to be able to look back on my life and see that I had accomplished something. It wouldn’t have to be something big like curing cancer, I would just want to have done something that mattered to someone. If more people just decided to help people, the world would be a much better place. I would also want to have long life, but not too long. I would want to live longer than 100 years, because that feels like it would end too quickly, but I would not want to live forever. Most people feel like their life is too short, and it would be nice choose how long you live. Most people feel like they would benefit from just a few more months or days or even hours. More time on Earth would also help because longer life means more time to help the homeless, do research, and so on. I would want something to be named after me to help people remember me. It could be a park or a bench or something, but I would want the people that I cared about to be able to remember me after I die. This is something that everyone struggles with. Everyone wonders if they will be remembered after they die or if their life has meaning. If people could know that they would be remembered by others, many people would die happy. Finally, I would want to be perfectly healthy and sane when I die. I imagine that there would be nothing worse than watching someone you care about suffer from something like Alzheimer’s, and I can imagine that it would be terrible to have to suffer from a disease like that. It is very hard to lose someone to cancer or any other disease, and I would not want to put my loved ones through that.

Holding Out for a Hero

One thing that these works share is a hero on some kind of amazing quest. Whether it is a quest to kill something, find something, or save something, it is most certainly a quest. They also have a hero that undertakes the quest. The main characters of the works are certainly heroes, at least in my opinion. To me, a hero is one who is different from everyone else and uses their uniqueness to accomplish a task for others. This difference can be anything, from Beowulf’s extreme muscles to Huck Finn’s different way of thinking. Heroes often help others and do what they think is right, but sometimes, other people may not consider their actions right or moral. For example, I appreciated the ancient hero Gilgamesh when he killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven who were causing problems in the forest and town, but I did not agree with his desperate search for eternal life after Enkidu’s death. It is certainly possible for a hero to be a heroine; they would just need to meet the description of a hero above. The reason that there are no female heroes on the list is because for the most part, when the works were created, women did not have the same role in society that they have today. This is evident in Beowulf, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh, and even to a lesser extent, The Lord of the Rings. Women were expected to stay at home and work while men fought and accomplished great things. There is no concrete guideline for how a hero must act. If the person does what they believe to be right and others agree with them, then they could be considered a hero by others. It is not possible to give yourself the title of hero. The people who tell the stories of the hero give them the title of hero. Before stories were written, they were passed down through word of mouth like with Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and The Odyssey. The purpose of heroes is to do things for others. If they do not, nobody will think of them as a hero and they will not be remembered for their actions. I believe that heroes are necessary. Things will not change unless someone like a hero makes them change. The quote, “Unhappy the land that needs heroes,” means that if a land is in need of heroes, then there are problems in the land and the people are naturally unhappy. It is not the need of heroes that creates the unhappiness, but the problems that create the unhappiness and need for heroes.