“I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn't embrace the word as my new name because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before.” (Pg 86) This quote from the memoir Wild introduces us to the author Cheryl Strayed and why she chose to name herself Strayed. She is possibly one of the most controversial authors when it comes to the topic of grit and perseverance because of her irrational behavior such as doing hard drugs and being an adulteress. After her mother passed away from stage four lung cancer—and also losing a part of herself—Cheryl decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in hopes to become a better person. Cheryl says that she persevered through the 1,100-mile rigorous hike but because the book is written in the first person about herself, her questionable life decisions make it challenging to determine if what she writes about really happened. Cheryl Strayed exhibits clear physical grit and endurance throughout the memoir but has a lack of emotional grit during her journey on the PCT trail because of her lack of care for anything including herself in danger and her irrational decisions. She consistently fails to make ethical, wise, life choices through adultery, drugs, and failing to care for others such as her husband who she constantly emotionally abuses and her aborted child that shows her lack of care for the lives of others and even herself. She impulsively decided to hike the PCT trail with only the knowledge from a book from REI and puts herself in danger with her irrational decisions such as throwing her boot, packing an overweight backpack, making duck tape shoes, not bringing hygiene items and supplies that could help her and many other instances of being unprepared for the well known difficult trail. Cheryl while mourning the loss of her mother and after she divorced her husband goes on a complete downward spiral making very irrational decisions and blaming her mistakes on her mother died not from her own choice of actions. Cheryl throughout Wild uses her mother’s death as an excuse for her poor actions and life falling apart. Brian Lindstrom-Cheryl’s first husband was victim to his own heart as well as Cheryl. Cheryl played with Brian’s heart like a puppet, but Brian cared for her. Despite her flaws, he had hope for her and helped her while she was hiking. Throughout constant emotional abuse and acts of adultery, Brian stayed loyal to Cheryl until the day Strayed divorced him. Throughout all of these actions, she justifies mistakes and behavior with her mother’s death. Her book and TED talks share a series of pitiful and unethical decisions which many people have titled “inspirational” even New York Times. Cheryl develops a strong addiction to heroin and promiscuous behavior while she is still married. Those decisions were an act of her losing herself and not wanting to live without her mother causing her to revolve her life around the loss of her. This spiraled her life out of her own control and her mental illness made it even more difficult for Cheryl. She constantly cheated on her husband with strangers as he shows a strong care for her well being, safety, and expresses his love for her as she continues to behave this way. She made a man feel comfortable enough to marry, she made a promise to be with him forever, and after everything had settled and Brian never changed, she screwed him over and turned their relationship into an emotionally abusive, one way, nonmutual, broken love partnership. Brian shows a clear example of hope; while Cheryl instead chooses to blame her behavior on life around her and continues to act as if the decisions she makes are justified due to her circumstances. One quote that is a perfect example of Cheryl’s mentality towards her own mistakes is “What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to f**k every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? (Pg 177) because it shows how she believes everything she has done might not have been good but it has made her the person who she is which in her eyes is okay. While Strayed was hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail she constantly reflects on her past. The rigorous journey caused her to think deeper about the decisions she has made and the person she wants to be. While she spent many days thinking, reading and meeting new people she realized what she wants but she doesn’t implement all of those hopes of change into her life. Angela Duckworth’s description of the four characteristics of grit as; practice, purpose, interest, and hope. In order to have grit, you must strive from deep within yourself to improve as a person and have these deeply rooted aspects to guide you and persevere through challenges. Cheryl shows many examples of wishing to do better, but instead of implementing growth or change on the trail she avoids change and conflict within herself. Cheryl asks herself “What if?” thinking past tense instead of thinking forward with hope, purpose, practice, and interest like a gritty person would. Cheryl Strayed undeniably endured many physical battles on the trail such as back problems, loss of toenails, soreness, hunger, and dehydration. She overcame these obstacles by pulling through with a strong physical mindset, strength and tenacious grit. This shows a physical grit that would be extremely difficult for even a very fit and practiced hiker. Although Cheryl did not complete the 2,650-mile hike, she says to have finished 1,100 miles of the PCT trail which is a robust materialistic achievement but also very impressive physically.There were plenty of people around Cheryl so she did not spend very much time alone. She was ready to give up on herself but instead chose to just keep walking through the physical pain and exhaustion. Her hope was that maybe the PCT would change her emotionally somewhere along, which does show some emotional grit because for some time on the trail she did, in fact, want to change herself and find self-forgiveness but she never implemented the change she wanted to have on the trail. It is not the trail or hike that changes someone it is the mental decision to accomplish what you set your mind to. Cheryl shows through her actions that even towards the end of her journey when she accepts drugs from another stranger that she does not have emotional grit. Throughout the memoir, Cheryl speaks about how she wants to change, but her actions have never reflected this. Many times she feels guilty but continues to behave the same way. Despite knowing what she was doing is very wrong and harmful. This is a perfect example of someone who does not show grit and does not change aspects of themselves they do not like but instead plays the victim card from the struggles of life. Cheryl Strayed does not have much emotional grit and is not the role model and inspirational person we should look up to or admire.
Honors Short Answer: A time in my life when I exhibited grit was my very first time going to an Adventure White Water camp in Oregon. I was baptized a Catholic growing up but never really went to church during my early childhood. One of my friends who was in 7th grade when I was in 6th invite me to go to a 9 day church camp with her in Oregon where we would go white water river rafting every day for 8+ hours and hike many waterfall trails, go cliff jumping, sleeping outside on the dirt with many bugs with no cell phones or service on the trip. I didn’t know that this event would completely change my life. I was a very shy 6th grader and didn’t know anyone else other than my friend Lauren and had never dry camped this way before. The church pulled me right into the community and after the first day, I knew I was at home. I had to push myself outside of my comfort zone to make many new friends, be open-minded to other beliefs and the physical grit of many long dangerous hikes. One of the most freeing, happiest and life-changing moments of my life was when I was standing on top of a 25-foot cliff at Clear Creek California on the lower Klamath River. Everyone was cheering me on to jump and my little 6th-grade self-was scared out of my mind. When my foot stepped off of the cliff I felt as if my stomach went all the way up into my chest and right when I popped up from under the water I remember seeing everyone clapping for me, hugging me and showing me the videos. I loved every moment of singing around the campfires, catching frogs by the beach and spending all day each day on stage four rapids getting flipped and tossed all around. It was a struggle to take that leap of faith into something that was completely new and unfamiliar to me. I had never been away from my family without communication for longer than a weekend and was scared I wouldn’t make friends or fit in. Since then if I hadn’t challenged myself and had the grit to go out of my comfort zone and go on that trip or that first cliff jump. I wouldn’t have become a middle school small group leader for the same camp now. I have had the honor of getting to go seven times to Adventure White Water and baptize six grade girls just like me in the Klamath River. I am not sure if I would even have the faith and same strong beliefs in God I have now, the amazing friendships and community, my love for the outdoors and white water river rafting and overall the perseverance and grit to push myself out of my comfort zone. Now I have been able to be a strong hard worker and independent believer in myself to help others and make good things happen in my life when I have grit and perseverance. This experience has caused me to become my absolute truest person and am so grateful for my family, church, school, and the life I have now. Being able to share my experiences from how this camp changed my life can hopefully have the same effect on others trying to understand who they are and their purpose during a hard transition such as Junior High.
Gatsby and Sinatra Comparative Essay
In the novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the character Jay Gatsby is almost identical to the successful jazz musician Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was born into a lower class family just like Gatsby. The both of them dreamed of better lives for themselves full of fame, wealth and popularity. Sinatra and Gatsby are perfect examples of the "American Dream" and how they both dream of success, love, happiness, and being able to achieve your dreams in America with hard work and dedication. Although the two have many similarities in their obsession for extravagant lifestyles, they also have key traits that really set them apart. Some of the similarities the two have to each other are how they both shaped culture during the jazz age and their obsession with love, wealth, popularity and happiness. They both became successful despite the challenges of coming from a poor background, they both preserved in their own ways to make names of themselves. Sinatra worked from the bottom up became one of the world’s most well known and loved jazz musicians and Gatsby worked from the bottom to have the most luxurious things, get the love of his life and have his life get better as time goes on. Gatsby and Sinatra both had goals and accomplished their goals of becoming successful, wealthy and well known. One of Gatsby’s most famous quotes in the book was a conversation with Nick Carraway is, “Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”. This shows how Gatsby’s character is much more of a dreamer than a person who will work hard to achieve what they want. He dreamt of recreating the past instead of actually working for a future for himself like Sinatra did. Sinatra was such a success because he not only had a lot of talent but he was also extremely dedicated to his work and making a name for himself. Sinatra's success didn’t come quickly like Gatsby’s because he had to work much harder. Gatsby’s way of making money was illegal and Sinatra was very holy because he didn’t partake in illegal activities like Gatsby did. Sinatra didn’t have to throw large parties to make himself well known because he created a successful musician out of himself despite coming from such a poor background. The differences between how they both gained their success were drastically different. Gatsby took advantage of probation and taking shortcuts while Sinatra took the long, challenging and slow path to become successful and have history attached to his name in revolutionizing the jazz age. While Sinatra and Gatsby both had dreams of getting the loves of their lives only Sinatra got the girl of his dreams while Gatsby spent too much time over dreaming about love and trying to recreate the past he once had with Daisy Buchanan. Not only is Gatsby a fictional character portrayed by Scott Fitzgerald compared to the real life of Sinatra who lived very different lives. Not many people cared for Gatsby as they cared for Sinatra when Gatsby died no one showed up to his funeral but when Sinatra died the whole world stunned. Gatsby only had two people that showed up to his funeral who really cared about him , while Sinatra still has supporters today who appreciate him and his fantastic life. From the article Gay Talese on a new addition of Frank Sinatra has a cold He states,“The way I do it, no matter who it is, I go over and over the quote with that person several times. I’m not getting the first take. I’m not interested in what they said. I’m interested in what they think.” This connects to how Gatsby wanted everything for Daisy. He always went over things several times and never stopped working. He was constantly trying to climb the ladder of success all for Daisy. This also can connect to Sinatra in how he was a very well rounded, thoughtful and successful person based off of his thoughts, feelings, and passions. Gatsby was not very wholesome in this way and had many flaws in how he gained his success in order to recreate the past compared to deeply enjoying the present and looking into the future like Sinatra did. Although they are both different and have many distinctions that contrast between each other both of these famous men were extremely captivating for reasons that are tremendously similar. They were both talented, mysterious, passionate, and largely contributed to the jazz age and its culture. Both of these men aspired for the "American Dream" and to a certain extent, both achieved the wealth and fame they desired growing up as poor boys. We can learn from the stories of these men about this time period, the jazz age, and the American Dream that is so widely desired even currently.