Leading lives that are habitually fast-paced and resultantly unfocused, I believe it is a necessity to frequently secede from this apathetic mindset and, in doing so, try to come to an awareness of what our motives and beliefs truly are.

            As a freshman in high school I constantly felt weighted down by the repetitive, energy draining, day-in-day-out routine of school, work, and weekend planning.  Moreover, I was completely unaware of what I was gaining from this routine as I was hardly sure why I really valued my education—Was it for the acquired knowledge in itself or merely for the success that a college degree would bring me later in life? Finding no time to assign these values, my actions simply seemed to be shaped by the necessities posed on me through this routine and, overall, I was left unaware of why I acted a certain way because I was incapable of defining what I believed that right way to be. These beliefs were left undefined merely because I didn’t have the time to separate myself from this chaotic mindset in order to define them.

It was on the way home from a stressful day of school one day, however, that I heard a song that would truly spawn my future action. The song, “Here’s to You” by OAR (Of a Revolution), pointed out that life often “[catches] you by surprise” and further explained that “what [one] sees going by is a shadow.” This song, stressing the importance to “live in front of your eyes” and to not let life pass you by unnoticed, unexpectedly caused my thoughts that night to stray from my homework to a questioning of my actions—“Had I ever even stopped to consider that my day to day actions could have been wasted in not getting what I truly wanted?,” and thus the more important follow up question arose “What do I want?” Resultantly, I began to compare my initial preconceptions about what I viewed as success for myself with the values and beliefs that  I was now beginning to assign to different areas of my life. It was in this initial reflection that my belief was defined—that is, ironically, the very belief that one must define his or her beliefs.

It is a necessity that one frequently stops to “check-up” on his or her motives in order to distinguish whether or not these motives are being fulfilled. Furthermore, just as beliefs need to be well defined, it is important to take time to define yourself, that is, who you are and who you want to become. Often times, our moral beliefs as well as our assigned values to our surrounding realities seem to get masked by the immediate demand for action. For this reason, just as the band OAR “suggests,” it would prove very beneficial to “spend a night thinking ‘bout your life,”. Our beliefs make up who we are, and, if we fail to define our beliefs, it only follows that we seemingly are failing to define ourselves. This I believe.