I don’t think I will ever be able to forget week 6’s story telling lesson. It was the most emotional lesson I ever had in my life. I think it’s good to have such emotional lessons once in a while. Like Dominic said, it’s like a therapy and it’s good for you. Once in a while, you should let out your emotions and think about the past. I felt this was one of the best storytelling lessons. Even though, we did not learn stuff like Greek tragedies and the sequence of stories, I feel that I learnt more through this lesson than any other lesson. Today’s lesson was a lesson about life. We should remember our past and think about people who were part of our life in the past but who are not with us anymore. Today’s lesson made me think about many things. A Lesson which makes you think even after you leave the class is the best sort of lesson.
We were broken into groups and I had Wendy, Yixuan and Dominic in my group. I offered to read Yixuan’s letter to the rest of the group. Her letter was very emotional and Yixuan started crying uncontrollably when I was reading out the letter. Her letter brought back memories of my uncle who is now dead. But my story is not very similar to hers because I was not very close to my uncle. He adored me a lot and always cared about me. What really hurts me is the fact that I never really cared about him like the way he cared about him. He was a very loud person mainly because he is deaf and he always used to shout whenever he asked me a question. I used to be very scared of him as a kid. I was very young and I didn’t know what disease he had. He went to Brazil and when he came back he had some sort of virus. He became slightly blind and deaf. His kidney and liver were affected and his health slowly deteriorated. I didn’t visit him regularly, the only time I saw him was during some family gathering which happened very rarely. His disease became more serious and he was admitted to a hospital. What hurts me even till today is the fact that I only went to visit him once in the hospital although I knew he was dying. Till now, I feel guilty about what I did.
I wanted to write the letter to my uncle instead but I was afraid I would become too emotional. I was also afraid that I wont know what to write in the letter to him. I actually felt like crying when I was reading Yixuan’s letter. Firstly, it reminded me of my uncle, especially the part when she wrote about the part when she went to visit him in the hospital. Secondly, the atmosphere in class was just so sad. I could her Sonia crying from the opposite table and Yixuan was crying just beside me. What an emotional day it was! But I felt this was one of the best lessons I had throughout my school life because we got to express our emotions and feelings which we would never let out on a normal day. I always had a impression that Sonia is a very cheerful girl with no worries. Someone who leads a problem free life because she is always so cheerful and bubbly. She looks like someone who will always look on the bright side of life, I never thought that there must have been a incident which has affected her so badly. I have not read her letter yet but I know that it’s not a very happy one.
Mr. Ryan read out his story which was emotional too. Whenever I see a teacher I don’t really think about their life or what they do outside of school. Sometimes, we students, don’t even think that teachers have a life outside of school. We think that school is their life, that’s what I used to think. Mr. Ryan always came across to me as a person that who leads a very happy life. He’s always so cheerful and happy. I would have never thought that he would have such a tragic past. His letter was very moving and emotional. His letter also reminded me of my literature book, “King of the Castle”. Mr. Ryan said that his father used to give him alot of gifts to compensate for the love he failed to give. This is exactly what Edmund’s father would do in the book. He would give his son expensive gifts because he didn’t know how to show his love to him in other ways. Edmund ends up being cold and evil. He even kills a boy of his age at the end. Luckily, Mr.Ryan has not turned out that way! Or has he? Hahaha just kidding!
After today, I realized something very important. I realised that I should be grateful for what I have. Suddenly, I feel ashamed of my constant complains and nags about how bad and lousy my life is. To be honest, I have nothing much to complain about. I can never imagine going through what some of my classmates have through. Atiqah had written a letter to her ex-boyfriend who died of leukemia. If I was in her case, I don’t think I would have been able to get over it. I see my classmates in a different light after today. Some of them have gone through a lot in life and they have been so strong to move on.
Another thing I learnt today is that you should never judge someone. This had nothing to do with our lesson but I just realized it on my way back home. Whenever we judge someone, we should stop and think about their life. For example, Sonia, I would have never thought that she would have so much of pain in her life. We don’t know what the other person is going through in their life so we have no right to judge someone. Today’s lesson made me think and realize many things about life.
After the emotional letter sharing session, we had our lecture. The lecture was interesting because Mr. Ryan asked a very interesting and philosophical question which again made me think about my life. “Are memories true?” I don’t think most memories are true. Although there are bitter memories, wherever we hear the word “memories” we think of sweet memories, pleasant things which will bring tears to our eyes. Since we have this perception that memories are supposed to be pleasant, we see the incidents which happened through a rose tinted glass. Some how, even the negative incidents will have some positive memories to it. When mr. Ryan asked this question. I started wondering about my memories and if they were true. Come to think of it, I think most of them are not. As time moves on, we mature and maybe things which may have been bitter in the past don’t seem that bad when we grow older. When the memory sits in our mind for some time, we tend to forget some details or we could be unintentionally filtering out the negative stuff because of our perception that memories are supposed to be sweet.
This discussion reminded me of the movie, “Big Fish” by Tim Burton. One of my all time favourite movies. This movie is about a character who exaggerates every single detail in his life. He is not liar, he was just trying to make life seem more interesting. He would tell his exaggerated adventures to his son. I feel that is what we do with memories, we tend to exaggerate the good ones and forget about some of the bad ones.
I think my reflection so far has been very emotional and philosophical so let me move on with the normal stuff like school work and so on. This week has been really stressful! I don’t even want to think about the deadlines and the tests which are very near by. The highlight of this week has to be my studio production workshop because I did something very stupid. I had to do the vision mixer. Being a slow learner, it was very hard for me to understand everything about the vision mixer in a few minutes. I tried my best to understand when Wendy was explaining it to me but I just couldn’t get it inside my head. I ended up screwing up the whole programme. It was really embarrassing. I think my reflection has become too long, I better stop here because I can go on and on about how embarrassed I was during studio pro! Haha
