With What Eyes Are You Watching?

We live in a society where everyone has a different perspective about the world. That’s why one should always listen to the two parts of the story, since each person sees the situation with a different point of view. What is the right choice for some, it’s the wrong one for others.

“And Tralfamadorians don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes- ´with babies´ legs at one end and old people´s legs at the other.” (Pg. 87)
If you ask a person living on Earth they will probably say that they see humans as normal creatures with two arms, legs, and eyes. Billy sees the Tralfamadorians as living creatures and he is able to socialize with them, but Barbara isn’t able to see them and believes that his father is crazy. In order to discover if the Tralfamadorians exist one should listen and see the perspective from Billy and then Barbara. You can only confirm the truth after seeing all of the different point of views, but at the end the truth is never completely uncover. Who guaranties to us which side is the right one? How do we know who is telling the truth? No one can. It’s up to us what we want to believe in, it’s our choice and nobody can judge us for our decisions because they don’t know the entire story of our lives, and as I mentioned before we all have different perspectives. I believe that Barbara shouldn’t be so harsh on Billy and she should let him believe in whatever he wants. It might not seem the normal thing for her, but for Billy it is. One should be able to tolerate all kind of ideologies and have the freedom of speech. In some countries, like Cuba, we can see how the society is allowed to believe in one way of government and in order to have a pleasant life they have to believe in what their leader, Fidel Castro, believes. Is this fair? No. Castro should take into consideration all of the different ideologies and this way create a better society.

We create our own perspectives, it’s up to us if we are letting others change our way of thinking.

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Nelson Mandela

Rewind. Play. Forward.

In times we wish for our lives to be like a movie, were we are able to pause it, rewind it, and forward it whenever we want. This way we could skip the obstacles and appreciate the good moments, but what will be the purpose of life if we could control it?

By rewinding your journey of life you could have the chance to correct your mistakes, but is it worth it? In Slaughterhouse Five they mention that “He (Billy Pilgrim) came slightly unstuck in time, he saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again.” (Pg. 73) He probably did this in order to understand the meaning of war, trying to understand why million lives were taking away and how it wasn’t worth it because nobody won at the end. Why recapture images that only bring bad memories? From my understanding of the book, as soon as Billy stars watching the movie he enters into his own world of the Tralfamadorians meaning that he is not in a good state of mind. This shows the huge effects that the war had on him and watching those kind of movies just makes his situation worse.

As Billy enters his world of Tralfamadorians he stars asking “why me?” This is a question we have all had throughout are lives and its one that can’t be answer. We can’t define our destiny our job is to accept it and take the most out of it. For some it’s difficult to accept the fact that some questions just can’t be answered. In this case, the Tralfamadorians, were able to give a concrete answer. They said: “Why you? Why us in matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.” (Pg. 77) I believe that life is simple, it’s just that we all make sure to make it complicated.

Rewind our past to learn, pause the moments to appreciate, and forward your life to accept your destiny.

Facing Reality

In time of danger we all react in different ways, it all depends on who our brains respond to what is happening around us. In the case of Billy his mind his completely block and he starts travelling to the past. Nobody can wake him, it’s up to him when he wants to come back and face reality. Many of us consider travelling as moving from one place to the other, but while reading Slaughterhouse Five I realized that recapturing memories can also be consider as travelling. I imagine that Billy wanted to keep travelling for eternity, but life is about waking up and facing the dangerous reality.

Last weekend I had lunch with my mom and grandmother and they started telling me how my great grandmother suffered the same way Billy did. Her mind would suddenly take her back to the war. She would forget that the war is over and she would start screaming BOMBS! I was able to see how this kind of events might mark a person for their rest of their lives. Even though she didn’t fought in World War II she had to experience it all. She had to pass through difficult times where they only had a piece of bread for a family of six. This affected her way of life after the war, she would appreciate every moment in life and wouldn’t complain. She never wanted anything new because she had enough with her one pair of shoes.
As I was reading slaughterhouse five I instantly started thinking about my great grandmother and in a way I understood what Billy was going through. Even though I didn’t had the opportunity to get to know her I knew that she was a person one should follow. She was able to survive a war and at the same time raise a family. She was able to do so by facing reality.

What If?

Some days we wake up and wonder what if we would be living somewhere else, what if we had never met, etc. In my opinion this a question that we should try to avoid because we have to take full advantage of our lives because we only have one. So why waste it wandering about what might have been.

In Slaughterhouse Five we can see how desperate Barbara is with her father, Bill. After the airplane crash he was never the same person. He starts imagining things and the things he says no longer make sense. Even though Barbara doesn’t mention it, we can see her desperation in her voice when she talks to her father. She is probably wondering how her life might have been if Bill wouldn’t have been on that plane. On the other hand the author explains how Weary and Bill are travelling to their past and trying to understand exactly what happened to them. In a way I understand why they would like to go back, we wonder all the time what would have happened if we would had taking a different path in life. What is done is done, and the past is meant to keep within us. Off course we would all like to go back and correct our mistakes, but unfortunately that can’t happen so why stay wandering about the past. A friend once told me “our eyes are placed in the front because it is more important to look ahead than to look back.” We should all apply this quote to our lives because life is full of turns and surprises and it is up to us which path in life we want to take. It is up to us how much advantage we want to take out from each day.

The Past Whispering In Our Ears

This weekend I started reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Right after I read the first sentence I knew that this book was going to take us to the past. Even though we sometimes try to forget about the past, without it we wouldn’t be the persons we are now a days.
Mary O’Hare caught my attention when she said: “You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more if them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs".
She believes that if they publish this book about Dresden and then produce a movie, people would start admiring wars and wouldn’t see the negative aspects from it. Mary probably had bad experiences in war and she doesn’t want for her kids to have to pass through the same. The soldiers the kids watch in the movies will become into their role models leading them to war. What’s the point of a war? Why keep promoting it? As the years pass by we have all realized that in war everybody loses, so why keep insisting on it?

In a way I can relate with Mary. Ten years ago a lot of innocent people died due to an act of terrorism known as 9/11. None of us want to go down that memory lane, since we would only see desperate families that lost a loving one. With this event we learned that by standing together you can make a better and bigger impact on the rest of the world. The only way the society was able to manage it so moderate was because thanks to our ancestor’s mistakes we knew that war wasn’t the solution. Looking at the past might bring you bad, but at the same time good memories. How could we evolve without learning from past mistakes?

The Perfect Life by John Koethe

Perfection can’t be achieved. We can work on getting the things the best way possible, but one can’t raise the bar of perfection. As we get older we start seeing the real world, and all of the things we considered wonderful are now becoming black and white. The colors in life that we once saw are vanishing and a hole starts growing inside us. This is how John Koethe describes life and he is desperate to find a way back to his perfect life. Many of us can relate to him because we have all felt lonely and desperate at times. When things don't go our way, we start questioning life and regretting our past. What is done is done, one should be able to move on and focus on the present because life is too short to be living with regrets. In the other hand we can't forget about the past because that's what created the person we are now a days. By overcoming our past we become a stronger person which helps us make better decisions in the future.
It appears to me that John wants to be a kid again, where the hardest decision was to choose with crayon to use to draw. Now, as an adult, the decisions we take might decide the rest of our lives. Sure, life was easier when our parents took care of everything but life is made up of different stages each with positive and negatives aspects. It’s our choice if we want to enjoy and take the correct path or fantasize about the past.