Reflection of Franklin and Juhan's articles.

I won't pretend to completely understand the philosophical question, "What is the 'self'?" but I will try and analyze the two readings that we have done so far in attempt to grasp the answer. In Franklin's article we read that to find "self" we must first find the faults that are inside of us and work on them until they dissapear. By doing this we can be the best that we can be, and we can learn more about our "self" in the process. In the week that followed I attempted Franklin's example to find my own "self." In Juhan's article we learned that we have all developed a strong conservatism, which helps us to avoid ignorance and catastrophes of the past, but also causes us to forget certain things in the past that are of value to us. This can help us, because we can become a better person by avoiding things that we had done in the past that might have harmed our 'self,' however, it can also harm us, because if we forget something of value it is like we have forgotten part of our 'self.' This is how I make sense of it. Please, comment and tell me what you think so that I might broaden my knowledge on the subject. =]

This week, January 25th - 29th, I committed myself to my value's chart, hoping to finally be able to overcome some of my pesky habbits (at least for the day). I chose six of my biggest issues with myself, and this is what they were: relax for one hour or more before 10:00 pm (I am almost always working), do not excessively spend money/waste food, do not visit Facebook more than five times a day (this one was especially hard!), be positive, admit when you're wrong/say sorry, and do not instigate fights with Brendan (my boyfriend). If I ended up breaking one of the six rules I set aside for myself I put a mark in the row that the rule belonged to.
Overcoming my habbits was a lot harder than I ever expected it to be. I am a very scheduled and organized person, and so I thought that, unlike Franklin, I would excell at my value's chart. Unfortuneatly, this was not the case. I am now finding out that finding the order of "self" is going to be a lot harder for me than I had originally thought it would be.

(My value chart. Sorry the scan isn't that great, and sorry it looks like I have no idea how to use a ruler! Also, there are dots in "relax before 10 pm" on Tuesday and Wednesday, they are just really faint.)

(My body chart. I had the most problems with my legs due to dance, and my shoulders and back because of my posture.)

- Tia Lambert '13