My Life or Whose Life: Blind Understanding of the Deaf Path

My Life or Whose Life: Blind Understanding of the Deaf Path: Have you ever felt like you are saying something, but not one person around you hears you or understands you? I live my life one day at the...

Blind Understanding of the Deaf Path

Have you ever felt like you are saying something, but not one person around you hears you or understands you? I live my life one day at the time, but most of the time I have that feeling where I am screaming at the top of my lungs, but no one hears or understands me. I always wondered why is that so? I speak English as everyone else around me, understand the same concepts as everyone else, know what is right and what is wrong as most people do, yet I feel as if I am silent to the world. What I did not know was that this day was going to be special. Thanks to a little boy, my life changed forever with the help of a silent and poetic language in motion - American Sign Language.

On that particular day, thinking about my unfortunate position of countless misunderstandings, I was sailing on the sparkling waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The glorious metal giant, the Royal Caribbean cruise ship “Majesty of the Seas,” was cutting every wave into two. The day was longer than usual, and I did not like that length because it gave me more time to think about my own life and my own egocentric problems. I was the perfume and make up specialist on board, I also carried a title of a Second Safety Officer of the Retail Division. My titles sounded very important to the gawking guests who were intrigued by who I was and where I came from. Most of the time I felt like an exotic animal trapped in a cage of a zoo, but I knew that my visitors did not even understand what I was saying, they just wanted to be human, they just wanted to hear my accent, and to have a story to tell when they went back home. I felt as unimportant as the running track on the upper deck; I was there to stock up shelves with cosmetic, smile to every spectator, and lower a life boat if this majestic floater decided to drag all with it down in the bottom of the ocean. I speak ten different languages, and none of them worked to my advantage. I wanted to climb on top of the ship and scream over the loud speaker, “Does anyone understand how I feel, or am I the only one?!?”

My thoughts of darkness were interrupted by a soft male cry. For a moment I thought that was it my own soul just crying for help, understanding, and attention. I glanced through the wide opened door of the cosmetic shop into the lobby area, and saw a boy clearing his face of his salty tears. Was I imagining my own sorrow, or was that little child really there? I wanted to know if I were losing the grasp of my own reality, so I approached the boy with fear in my heart. By the time I got to him, I had a conversation in my head with both my negative and positive side of my own human nature. I stopped right in front of my own imagination or reality, and said, as quietly as I could, “ What is wrong? Can I help you somehow?” The boy just continued to sob while his eyes were getting red from all those tears. I started to believe more and more that my imagination had finally overrun my reality, or maybe the boy was just plain rude.

I thought to myself that if the child were not real my fingers would go through him if I tried to touch him. I raised my right arm and poked his shoulder with my index finger in order to get his full attention. My finger touched his soft cotton material and I felt the bounce from his flesh. “He is real, he is real!” --I was jumping from joy inside my head. The boy turned and just gave me a sad, almost pitiful, grin. I started to study his hair characteristics and features with the goal to determine which was the most possible language he understood. His skin was dark, but not black, it almost looked as if he had been tanning in the hot summer sun his whole life; his eyes were big and round with dark brown color and looked like marbles; his hair was black and straight as if someone has been pulling it with a hair iron. I asked him the same question in Spanish, and still nothing. My next attempt was Portuguese and as soon as I was done with the question, I noticed his face changed expression. He started talking in the language I was a little familiar with already, but what confused me even more was the poor pronunciation. I kept on repeating to slow down, but he kept on going as if he did not hear me say a word. I noticed that his hands were flying everywhere while he was trying to speak. At that point I heard something deep inside me say, “ Use your hands, not your mouth.” So I did, I knew just a bit of sign language from a dvd that I saw once. I signed, “Do you want help?” At that very moment I saw a smile on his face, and he silented his own voice, and his arms were flying around as if he would become an angel at that very moment and fly away. His hands were signing so fast from excitement that I had no moment to think what I was doing. My mind was telling me, “What did you just do? You know only a few signs, and now this child is asking for your help, but you cannot understand most of what he is signing.” I tried every single way I could to explain to him that I could not understand and to slow down, but he kept on signing. At one moment, I sighed and just felt disappointment of myself because I could not help him. He stopped and looked at me as if he read my face; he started signing slowly and it look more like charades. Finally, I understood that he was lost and was looking for his mother. I took his guest card and called the front desk; all this time I felt a little uncomfortable because he did not take his eyes off of me. I was wondering why he kept on staring at me, but I did not give it a lot of thought; I had a mission and that mission was to find his mom. After a few minutes, a lady came storming through the store's door and went straight for the boy. They were signing back and forward, not noticing me for a moment. The mother turned to me and thanked me for all I did, and she took the boy by his hand and they left together.

That day my world changed. I wanted to know this angelic language in motion, I wanted that feeling again. I never forgot that child's happy expression and smile when I took a moment to try and understand him, and I never want to forget it. I know that both in the child's eyes and his mother's eyes I was the hero, I was the one that saved them, but in my eyes it was the other way around. I know that there will be a lot of people who will never understand or hear me, but that is not important now. That day I got out of my egocentric bubble and saw a different world, a world where I can understand people the best as I can; a world where I can make a small difference, yet big enough for those who need it; a world where one problem can be solved with kindness and understanding. This was going to be my world where walls do not rise in front of people, and bridges can be crossed with a little attention, open mind, and understanding. I finally knew who I wanted to be and that I am not alone in this world of confusions and misunderstandings. I decided to learn this language of poetic movements. I know now that we are all a little lost, trying hard to tell people what we mean and what we want; but I am not lost anymore. My path was clear and I had to say goodbye to the powerful metal prison and all those smiling clueless guests. I wanted to know that one day, when I see a child or an adult on the street so frustrated with trying to be understood by other people, I will be able to stop them and say, “You are not alone, I am here, and I understand you.”

My Life or Whose Life: The Longing and the Reality

My Life or Whose Life: The Longing and the Reality: Today, technology is on the rise more then ever, the media -- directly or indirectly -- gives us a sense of our own culture and other cultur...

My Life or Whose Life: Heaven Built on Hell

My Life or Whose Life: Heaven Built on Hell: We all have one true love that we spend the rest of our live with, but once upon of time we all had our first love. For some people the fir...

Heaven Built on Hell

We all have one true love that we spend the rest of our live with, but once upon of time we all had our first love. For some people the first love stayed and became the one and only true love, but for others it would be a lesson learned for the future. What is important is what we take with us from that experience and how we will apply it later on in life. I shall never forget my first love because he gave me the ability to smile again in times when our lives were not guaranted. He was the artist and I was the blank canvas, with every stroke of his brush I was changed, shaped, and colored into who I am today. When I was sixteen years old I met him in the mists of the Balkan wars. Back then, we were both lost and scared looking for something, only to find out that we were looking for each other . Immediately, we became the story of one soul that was split in two by God and brought back together here on Earth. Our love was born in the gray winter night, but blossomed with the early spring flowers. The days we spend together seemed so short, but time did not seemed to pass when he was so far away from me. He was one of the smartest people I have ever met, he wanted to know everything and anything. Sometime I think that the world was at the palm of his hands. I wanted to see myself like that, smart and interested in the unknown. Another way he changed me was with his will. He was the kind of person who was always on the go, there was never a moment where it was boring. He always said that there is not enough time in the day and we should always try to do as much as possible. I used to be very lazy before I met him, but he killed my laziness. Now I am the pro-active person who is always doing something. His biggest contribution to who I am today was he made me believe I am worthy of love. It was st . Valentines day and I did not expect anything, for it was not an Orthodox celebration . I will never forget what he did that day, that brings a smile to my face till this day. He told me that he needs help with his homework, so I went to his house. I walked in his house as usual, without knocking. Then, I teared up as soon as I saw the rose petals on the floor that led me to him. There he was in the living room with that old guitar , playing and singing “ Don't you cry ” by Guns and Roses. We were not sure of our future, as the bombs and bullets were flying above our heads , but we were sure of our love. There was no tomorrow for the two of us, there was only now and now was happiness forever. I know now that it was ironic that it was such a sad time for all, but for us it was heaven built on hell and I took that heaven with me everywhere I go because I am his artwork.

The Longing and the Reality

Today, technology is on the rise more then ever, the media -- directly or indirectly -- gives us a sense of our own culture and other cultures as well. Can all those messages, which are openly or secretly conveyed through the mass media also, have negative connotations just as much as they can present positives. We are all aware that we should learn, or at least understand, something from the message that the media presents us. What if we, as human beings, cannot live up to the standards of the new technological era vs. the longings of our romantic notions about what we desire.

My favorite movie of all times -- such a cliche, but true -- is “Pride and Prejudice,” which was originally written by Jane Austin, but made into a movie in 2005 and directed by Joe Wright who in a way acts as a an opinion leader, staring Keira Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. The book was written in time when the only media that people had knowledge and practical use of was books, but yet the common tale of love of the late seventeenth century still effects us in the beginning of the twenty-first century. I have watched that movie more than normal, so much more that I finally decided to buy the movie and the book in order to relive the romance of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy every single time I felt down about my own romantic relationships in the past. Sometimes, I believed that maybe if I watched the movie over and over again I will get the answers I should have in order to find what is missing in my own romantic life. That single thought raised few questions in my mind “how many women have pondered over this movie--and movies like it--in order to look for answers and information about the positive and negative social stereotypical expectations about men?”

When I think about the social expectations that were created from this movie I will have to relate to all of them. One such expectation is creating the great romance with all its ups and downs of a great poetic romance. Do we, women from this age, believe that such romance travels through time and lands on our door steps? People need to understand that the cultural values of that time were in no correlation with the ones people have today. Once upon of time -- in the seventeenth century to be exact -- people used to court in a very different manner, so different that the rules were known, unlike in this technologically modern era where the rules of dating are so clouded by all the different cultures that our society is built upon and all our own egocentric needs, that there are not clear standards of courtship. Back in the time of Jane Austen, a man would most likely court a woman in public while she is escorted by a chaperone, and the byproduct of the courtship was always the same - marriage. Today, courtship is replaced by dating without the watchfuleye of a chaperone. The process of dating is much longer than in the seventeenth century. Most of the time dating does not lead to the same conclusion either. Most of the time dating is mainly for companeonship.

Another negative impression that people would get from this movie is setting unreachable standards. Sometimes people -- including myself in the past -- cannot separate between fiction and reality. Maybe the standards of Elizabeth were true for that time, but today they are most likely fiction. Men do not even talk in the same manner today as Mr. Darcy did in the seventeenth century. They do not even stand with the same posture, nor do they have the same mannerisms as he did. Nowadays, men approach a woman in a bar, restaurant, or other public place with the language of our own present and the posture that is half child and half old man. Then they use the manners of today's characters from the mass media, most likely their own heroes. A woman who sets her own standards based on Mr. Darcy, would only be disappointed by the introduction of the modern man, and either make a decision to be with this cartoon character while her own Mr. Darcy comes along, until he never does. By this time, a woman might realize that it is time to lower the standards and make them more realistic or face a life full of solitude.

Movies such as “Pride and Prejudice” do not set standards only for men, but for women, too. The stand that Elizabeth takes in the movie is somewhat of an independent rebel, someone who is strong enough to stand on her own two feet by herself, someone who would not settle for anything less than perfection and true love. Is this strong independent role of a woman attractive enough for men or is it setting us up for a failure? True, independence expressed by women today is not unusual, but in order to be in a committed relationship a little “neediness” is a key ingredient. After all, it does need two in order a relationship to work, not just one, or a person will have a relationship with themselves. Once a person realizes that “anything less then perfection” might mean that the same would be expected from that person, too, and let`s face it, perfection either does not exists or not one person can live up to it, a person might find himself or herself willing to compromise in order to share the anthropological reason why two people bond in a relationship-to procreate and populate.

Is it possible that movies from the same genre such as “Pride and Prejudice” constructing women into today's drama queens? Is our desire for a mythical romance in appliance with the desire to dramatize our personal lives more than necessary? It is not uncommon women to have a perfectly normal relationship with a perfectly normal man, but still find a reason to dramatize it to the point of crisis. The movie gives a scenario of two different class people who fall in love, but as stated in the title, pride and prejudice complicate and dramatize the situation. When a person watches the movie, a person might want to experience the whole romantic process of it, including the drama. This might peril the possibility of a “happily ever after” with a potential mate due to the fact that men are different from women. Most men do not take drama lightly, and in most cases, they look for mates--if they are looking for mates at all--who are stable, not women who pretend to be the modern-day drama queen.

Writers and movie makers usually learn enough about peoples “wants” and “needs” and exploit that knowledge in order to sell their product to the audience or become famous and timeless. They use different formulas in order to achieve the desirable. The formula used in this movie is the use of the women`s longings and search of the “perfect man” and “perfect romance” a historically dominant ideology by women. These few terms can be related to the interactionist theory, where people widely connect to the symbolic meaning of those same terms. This formula captured my attention many years ago, and for a while I was stuck in dreamland of the possibility that I would find my own Mr. Darcy. Even though many messages presented by this movie could create a negative expectations if taken all too seriously, I have found that the movie has helped me in a way of finding myself in such a way that I understand the features I appreciate in men. After the worldwide search for my mate, I finally had a reality check and met my husband. In my own understanding, my husband is a perfect mixture of Mr. Darcy and a modern man. After all, I have learned that the only reason why I kept on watching that movie is that I want the connection which Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy have. At the end of the day, we are looking for someone who we can be with without screaming every five minutes. If the “perfect man” does not live among us, nor does the “perfect woman,” therefore, all we can do is find the one that is just right for us.

My Life or Whose Life: Almost an Angel

My Life or Whose Life: Almost an Angel: I close my eyes and I see the same picture every single time. I am in the bed and you are sitting next to me. Your eyes are filled with te...