Snowball Draft 1

What is the meaning to live life to the fullest? It sounds impossible when I am personally alienated from most of the aspects of experiencing life. RD Laing states "Our behaviour is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things." His statement is completely true and it describes exactly how my life flows. I do things the way how I see other people doing it. How I approach certain situations is controlled by my experience and how other people do it. My childhood does not compare to any typical lifestyle. Imigrating from the Philippines was a major turning point and as I adapted here in the U.S. I became less aware of my past childhood. This class has helped me connect with my past, my body and my dreams.

My past as an american child even was a blurr until I explored my childhood album. It's funny how I found out that a kid in my class who I rarely talked to was in my 1 st grade class in PS 3. Pictures helped me connect with lost memories. It was obvious that my mind secluded those memories because the album was hidden under piles of dust. Art projects from elementary school also made me realize that I was more creative before then now. On an african tiki doll that I painted over, had atleast 5 dfferent colors. I also notced that I tried changing the tiki doll to a business man. Back then that is how I pictured what grown men looked like. Guys with ties maybe intimidated me when I was little influencing me to morph my african guy to a wall street white coller executive. My view on older people and societies expectations for them morphed my creative art piece to a bussiness man. A some what colorful doll still resembles a working class person.

My dreams before this course were just blurrs. I never remembered what I dreamt the night before. My body became a machine, working, sleeping and then waking up to do the same thing again. School, I believe is training me for my future of being a capatalist machine. I have realized that dreaming is a way for me to connect with my creative mind. Subconsciously imagining scenes of happiness, sadness and fear proves the creativity of my mind. Although I am at times really creative consciously, I have lost a vast amount of memory when it comes to things that were unimportant. I have realized that I anticipate events for the next day and i lose the sense of dreaming at night. My past experiences of skimming through dreams became a habit. This habit imprisoned my creative mind.

As a new Yorker I have adapted the skill to fit almost everything in one scheduled day and walking extremely fast. I am currently realizing that I have never really stopped to smell the roses. I have never taken any classes to relieve stress and all that stress has grown out through the roots of my hair. It is a bit unnoticable but I have strands of gray hair. Breathing exercises which I now do at home, has helped me calm down and has also helped me think about life and how it runs me. Pain in my body were sometimes ignored because I use to believe that pain is something that will just go away. I was wrong. Through excercising, being sexually active and playing sports I was embodied. Ignoring pains and other pleasures like enjoying breathing proved that my lifestyle was unhealthy. Even if the air in NY is highly polluted, i enjoy talking walks. During those walks I try to sense all of my feelings all over my body. I sometimes even tell my friends that my feet feels wierd after walking with them. My past experiences of ignoring those sensations molded me into a robot and now my mind is more open to how my body feels. Now a days I analyze pain and i try to relax my muscles after a long day in my bed.

My unhealthy habits in the past created a robot but, now I am more open consciously and subconsciously. I try to share my dreams with my sister almost everyday even if I feel like she doesn't want to listen and after or even during eating I try to close my eyes to feel every sensation. i sometimes think I can follow where the food is traveling. I have been more aware of my bodies capabilities helping adavance in exercising. The more I think about my past, the more I figure out how much I have changed for the better and worse. My behaviour has shown improvement because I have freed my mind of ridiculous stress.