All the shining things

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We are human beings. In this we are all the same. We are faced with the same basic experience. There are two things we must do:

  1. We must die.
  2. We must choose.

Every day we are faced with a million choices. Should I get up out of bed?Should I have corn flakes or a sandwich for breakfast? Should I go to school or stay at home? Should I talk to this friend or that friend, or be silent? Coke or Pepsi? McDonalds or Burger King? This life mate or that one? Love or hate?

Many of these choices have us doubting. We get stuck, we don’t know what is right. We wait. Hope for more information or that somehow the choice will be made by somebody or something else.

The responsibility of choosing comes crushing down on us. We live our life. It is our one shot at it. What if I make the wrong choices?

But sometimes we just know! We make a decision in a heartbeat. We have a clarity of purpose. We know with dead certainty what to do. What is different between the decisions of doubt and the certain ones?

Saving a life

In 2007, a young man waiting on a Brooklyn subway platform suffered a seizure and fell onto the subway tracks. Wesley Autry, a fifty-year-old construction worker, jumped onto the tracks and covered the young man with his own body, holding him flat between the rails, as a train bore down upon them. Autry saved the man’s life; he was a hero. Autry knew what to do and he did it immediately.

 

Questions

  1. Why did the man do what he did? Was it a smart choice? Why?/Why not?
  2. Have you heard of something similar? What?
  3. When do we make fast decisions?
  4. What can guide you in making difficult decisions?

Language

List all new words in the text. Take four or five of them and use them in an sentence. Post the two sentences below.

The above idea for this class was inspired by the book All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

2 reaktioner till “All the shining things”

  1. A guy was having a seizure and fell on the train tracks.

    The guy who saved him from being run over by the train had no doubt.

    Gilla

  2. 1. Tom knows what to do When Mary has an seizure.
    2. I doubt he can play a guitar.
    3. I can’t alway see with clarity, especially When someone is involved.
    4. She Was an author.

    Gilla

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