"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." - Thomas Paine

The problem that I have with religion lies not in the central message, but rather in the approach. I was raised in a Catholic home, going to Church every Sunday, and have undergone the sacred sacraments of baptism, first communion, and confirmation. However, throughout my high school years, I found myself questioning more and more what I found that I really believed in. And still today, even though I have not truly solidified my philosophy for life or religion, I have learned a lot from what I have been through.

In my freshman year of high school my parents sent me to confirmation classes, and I found that I really did not understand what it truly meant to declare your loyalty to something so much greater to yourself before having explored yourself fully. I was then confirmed the following spring, and realized soon after that it was not something I should have done. I was not ready to make that commitment, and was more forced into it. Sophomore year, after a summer of give and take with my parents over whether or not it was necessary for me to attend masses on Sunday, I headed (with three friend) a group that explored what religions of all kinds had to offer. The group was comprised of about 20 friends of friends who came by word of mouth varying from Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Muslim, and even atheist. We called it SEARCH, for that was what we intended to do. People then chose topics from which they wanted to lead discussions for future weeks on different aspects of human life and how opposing religions viewed them. For me, it was probably the most pivotal time in exploring what religion and spirituality meant to me. It was the period of time that I found myself struggling physically and emotionally dealing with day-to-day life with social problems, and more pressingly my father’s diagnosis/prognosis.

I do not in anyway detest religions, and what I have learned more than anything is that religions are a great thing for certain people to lean on and if it works for them, then great! For me, I would refer to myself much more spiritual than religious. It is something that I have come to based upon what Lionel Stevenson refers to as man’s awareness as “he becomes aware of his own insignificance, bounded by inefficient senses and ‘moving about in worlds not realized’” (653). As I have written about before, a vital fear that I have is not amounting to enough. As time progresses I realize more and more that the time to act is now, and I must take everyday as a chance to celebrate and take in as much as possible.

In my quest for greatness, I realize that nothing can be worth anything without having the steadfast foundations placed, and should be the central theme to which I focus my attention more than fame or fortune. “GOD” to me is a word that refers to an individual that you surrender your life, and not really what I like to think as an essential part of my being. However, I have spent ENDLESS nights trying to decipher what it is that gives me the strength and simple stamina to make it through a day, and although most is attributed to science, I, personally need something else to connect me to other people and the natural world.

At the end of my Junior year AP English class, having already taken the AP exams and not really having anything else to practice for, my teacher assigned the final project as to define your beliefs. I called my “religion” pitta, which meant KNOWLEDGE in some language. In an attempt to be intellectual or I don’t even know what that is what I had pledged my allegiance to. I think that today it resounds just as true.

In Tennyson’s poem he writes:
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell. (CXIII)

I think that this a very appropriate quote that describes my situation thoroughly. I continue to search myself for the answers to my individual philosophy of life that I feel is granted to everybody. Through this search I hope to find a solid founding that allots for success, and will follow me to the end of my life and may even carry past.

"I don't know the key to success - but the key to failure is trying to please everybody" - Bill Cosby

I have a history of being bad at making decisions. It runs in the family, really, but I think it runs parallel to the standards by which we have. Being the youngest member of my generation, I constantly feel pressured to doing well in school, or generally performing well in anything that I do. The decision part of it comes from being OVERLY-thorough in making sure that the steps made are in the right direction. You could say that it is due to the fact that I hope to be making the best decisions in order to make me a more successful, or FIT individual.

It is sort of a running joke between my friends and I over who has to make the decisions of what we will do one night or something, and rarely does that responsibility fall onto me, and I will try to explain why. In given the option between A and B, I lay out the pro’s and con’s of each and try and analyze and visualize the sort of events that might unfold choosing either. Then, once having chosen A, would regret not choosing B and weigh future occurrences against what could have happened. I feel that I am plagued by this because I am really more interested in appearing the best that I can be. It is something that Nowak, May and Sigmund refer to as “the principle of give and take [that] pervades our society” (403).

Being the most Fit to me does not necessarily mean out shining others in one certain field. I would much rather amount the potential that I have be being ready to adapt and adopt to any given situation. For me, that is an extension on the idea of a Liberal Education, and a reason that I chose Plan II. It is that variability that allows one to “bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances” (Carnegie 397). That to me is what deems a person successful.

An additional reason why I often feel pressured by decision making is because I waste considerable amounts of energy worrying about how my friends and family will take the decision and how they will react, or what they will think. This year has definitely been a learning experience in making decisions for myself. It is MY life, and I should only judge myself to my own standards, and by nobody else’s. However, when in constant competition with others, that is sometimes hard to swallow. Edwards Wilson takes about the paradox in saying “that what is good for the individual can be destructive to the family; what preserves the family can be harsh on both the individual and the tribe to which its family belongs; what promotes the tribe can weaken the family and destroy the individual” (410).

I realize that indecisiveness is not something that I alone face, and Matt Ridley also denotes this fact in his Origins of Virtue, comparing the human species to that of other more social animals. “We are far more dependent on other members of our species than any other ape or monkey. We are more like ants or termites who live as slaves to their societies.” It is my conquest as I move forward in life to relinquishes the confines of servitude in trying to please others, and in doing so, hope to be a more Decisive individual making decisions that seem FIT.