Thursday, February 10, 2011

Blog Question for Chapter 4 of Handout - Losing It (Tan Hao Ming)

I can actually take away quite a lot of things from this chapter of the storybook, from all and each of the eight chapters. These things are important to me as it can help me become a better person in a lot of different ways, and also helping me by giving me suggestions on what to do in different situations.

For the first story on 'No Day But Today', it is about a girl named Mary who was studying in middle school and whose father had passed away deal to cancer. However, her father was very optimistic and did not think about dying at all. From this story, I can learn how to deal with losing someone through death, how to deal with different things which are important to me. I had also learnt that we must be able to take everything around us for granted, cherishing the every moment we had with the person or even the pet which we are going to lose, either through death or through distance.

For the second story on 'I am no Longer Mad', I can take away some very important things too. I will be able to know how to deal with situations whereby I lost someone. From this story, I had also gathered that we should always try not to be mad at someone but instead stay calm during such situations, though it is very hard to do so. When we do lose a loved one, I am sure that we will be unable to get over the grief so easily and we need some time to recover from the setback.

From these two stories up above, I had learnt about the five stages of grief, and I had seen what actually happened to the people who get hurt when losing someone they loved so much in the story. The five stages of grief were very useful and they can tell us what we are going through is not wrong, like being furious with the person which passed away and being sad about the loss of the person.

For the third story on 'My Gift of Life', this story is a little different from the first two stories, whereby in the sense that it is about the author losing a kidney instead of losing someone through death. I feel that this story is important as it also gives us information of what and how to deal with when it comes to losing an internal organ. I feel that we must have information in different parts of losing someone of something, the more the better as we will know how to deal with such situations when it really occur.

For this story, my takeaway is firstly about not everything that we expected will happen will happen. In this story, the author and her parents had expected the kidney transplant to be on one day, but then it was postponed to another day. So, what I feel is that we must be readily prepared for anything that happens to us, no matter whether is it good or bad. Another takeaway is that again we must take everything for granted and not ask for more when you already have enough, because sometimes it will cause the situation to be worse. When you already have something on your hand, like the new kidney in this case, we should be grateful about it as there are other people who are worse than us.

For the fourth story on 'A Broken Fence', one of my takeaways is that I or rather we must care about our own safety. Safety comes before everything as it will cost us our life sometimes and we must be careful in everything we do so that we can succeed. Another takeaway is that we must be able to deal with someone's death which is caused by us and it is very hard to do so as we will not be able to get over the guilt so easily. However, I feel that we should not look back at bad things that has happened but instead at good things. Looking forward is also another method to keep us happy. 

We must be able to differentiate what to do and what not to do in different situations so as not to cause any harm to ourselves, any harm to our family and friends. This will only hurt them and may cause a lot of unexpected events to happen or unexpected effects to occur.

For the fifth story on 'Chain Reaction', my takeaway is that I think and I feel that we must not think about or even try to make out what our friends are like, as what we think may be wrong and when anything goes wrong like this, our friends will be hurt and in the end we may be hurt too as nobody will want to make friends with us. I feel that we must instead focus on our work in school. Another takeaway from this story is that we should appreciate the kindness of other people around us, especially when they are kind to us. We must also appreciate what they help us to do and stop thinking back about what has happened between us and them. Appreciating their help will benefit both parties and make both happy.

For the sixth story on 'Th Day An Angel Was Made', my takeaway is about how we are able and how we should deal with the grief of someone which is very dear to us died or passed away. I feel that this is important as it will allow us to succeed in life; we will not be looking back at the bad thing which had happened which will only distract us from doing something good for ourselves. My second takeaway is that being careful is very important as it is another key feature of how we are going to do well and go on with our lives. And again, I had learnt how to take things for granted and that we must be able to remember and recall the good memories we had with the person which we had lost.

For the seventh story on 'My Star Girl', in this case, it is about losing someone through distance instead of through death, and also instead of losing something which is important to you. This will obviously not be as serious as losing someone through death. From this story, I had learnt that when you are addicted to something or to doing something, you will continue doing it without stopping unless there is someone or something which stopped you, though it is very hard to have been able to do that. I feel that we must always try to do something meaningful instead of being to addictive to something and have a balance in everything we do so that we can feel good.

I had also learnt from this story that losing someone through distance may also be quite painful for us. I feel that to avoid this feeling, I think we should try to look at the positive things as one of the solutions, so that you will not think back about your friend which moved to other places which is further from you. Another solution may be to keep in contact with your friend and tell them about what is happening in school lately(for losing someone through distance).

I had also learnt about being sad and feeling painful at your friend when they do bad things which you do not want them to, or maybe the thinking of you as the one who caused him/her to be like that. We can try the solutions given up there, which is to look at the positive things and also keep in contact with the friend so that you are able to tell him/her nicely on what he has done wrong. If he/she still does not listen to us, then we will have no choice but to stop persuading him/her.

For the last story on 'The Unforgettable Storm', this is also a story about losing someone like your mother through distance and I know it is very painful to part with your mother like that. I had learnt very important things from it, although some of it seems to be the same as some of the previous stories. The first great thing I had learnt is that we must feel prepared and being smart and quick-witting in situations which are terrible and against time is a very good thing and we must feel good about it.

Another thing which I had learnt is that we need to cherish life and cherish what we have with us everyday before it is too late for us. This is the same as losing someone, if we knows that he/she is going to die, we must cherish the immediate time we are having with him/her and try to help him/her finish the things he/she feels like and wants to finish. We as people will need to cherish everyday, especially the good things which happened, as we will not know what is going to happen tomorrow.

I had also wanted and learnt that we must be able to think positively once again, as in life there will be good and bad things which will happen to us, we must cherish the good ones and leave out the bad ones in order to be happy. If you would ask me, I will say that determination and having a strong heart is a very important thing that will help me to deal with such situations, like having a strong heart will not make us think about it and therefore feel sad; We can bear with it, and this comes to determination, whereby we must have patience to wait for the time to come, the time for our good things to happen.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for including an introduction to your essay. I wasn't sure if you had a conclusion or the last paragraph was part of your answer to what you learnt from the last story.

    My comments for your blog is that you have provided a very systematic and well- thought through answer and that you have definitely done a good job at answering the blog question. You picked out what you felt were important to you. I just hope that you can apply them in your life; in reality. Sometimes takeaways are just things you think are good but if there is no practical application, then they just remain as ideas.

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