Eileen Paulino One of seven virtues of ancient Greek times was faith. Faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Regardless of where we are in our lives we always maintain faith that we will either advance in life or things will simply get better. I myself didn’t always have faith I didn’t think that if I wanted something bad enough it would happen for me. I always looked around at my surroundings and saw myself as a Hipic female withgoalsand ambition who no matter how hard she worked wouldn’t amount to much because to most of the world around me I was simply that a Hipic female from the Bronx.
There was definitely a time when I lost all faith in myself my world seemed to be crashing down right before my eyes. On August 11th of 2009 I lost someone who was very important to me, my uncle. We were so much alike sthrong personalities and two people who wanted more in life and had faith that somehow or some way we would provide better for our families. I was much younger but losing him caused me to want to give up I didn’t understand why it was that he had been taken from me he was one of a couple of people of who had faith in me and how far I could go in life see I’ve always had a passion for fashion.
For along as I can remember it has been a great part of me. When I lost my uncle I felt as though I hadn’t done enough while he was around and that now I was being punished with having to deal with his lost and afamilywho was devastated. My mother had lost her brother and my grandmother her eldest son for so long their faces had no idea as to what a smile was and seeing my mother and grandmother so down caused great change in me.
I no longer was doing well in school and for the first time in my life I stopped drawing and fashion wasn’t as important to me anymore. As time progressed I wasn’t getting any better I had tried to make myself believe that my uncle was still on vacation in the Dominican Republic and that he would be back but these unrealistic hopes as time went by became just that I was being faced with the fact that he was gone. My mother soon enough began to see me giving up on my dream and that I was not doing well in school anymore and it started to tear her apart.
My mother was and still is my biggest cheerleader when I didn’t have faith in myself she did so why was I letting her down? At some point it hit me that everything happens for a reason and that my uncle was in a better place he as no longer suffering and regardless he was looking down on me and he wouldn’t have liked for me to give on my dream so I needed to have faith in myself that I could go on and that regardless of how the rest of the world perceives me I can become someone.
There’s no reason to lose faith because life handed me a tough time I realized this should motivate me to have more faith in myself and who I believed I was destined to be. I began to do better in school and started to draw again, fashion is my calling and I should’ve never lost faith my myself. Till this day although I’m still very young have so much more to learn and I haven’t accomplished my dream I don’t lose faith in that one day I will and that’s all thanks to my mother.
My mother was born and raised in the Dominican republic and she always had faith that her life will someday turn around and when she had her family she would provide them with a better life then she was given and till this day she hasn’t failed us, she’s been the best mother anyone could ever ask for and for my lifetime I’ll be grateful she never lost faith in me because thanks to her I didn’t lose faith in myself and I’m still fighting for my dream.
The first reading I came across with my professor this semester was “ Sherman Alexie The Joy of Reading and Writing : Superman and me”, this is a short story about a Spokane Indian who’s will to be better and great faith in himself allowed for great success to come his was regardless of the challenges he faced in his earlier life.
