Moreau Integration 1 assignment James DeMaro Professor Espeseth Moreau 15 October 2021 What Makes Life Worth Living While I have been on this earth for seventeen years, only recently have I spent time thinking about what I truly value. While these thoughts may take the form of questions such as what brings me happiness and how can I help others, the real question has always been what do I believe. Root belief statements are what define us as individuals. They are what mold us into the humans that we are. During my senior year of high school, I did a lot of thinking about what makes me who I am. I found that life’s values lie in relationships. I found that it’s more important to be yourself than some image that other people want you to be. Most importantly, I defined my root beliefs. Moreau has helped me to realize these root beliefs in their full potential. I’ve learned where I’ve come from and what brought me to this point as I attend the University of Notre Dame. “Where I’m From,” a short poem about our roots, helped me to see how my values brought me to one of the best Catholic, private schools in the country (“Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon - Moreau FYE Week Six). In my own life, the root beliefs that define who I am are that I believe that I am searching for life-giving relationships, that my community should work to help others, and that it is extremely important to value ourselves and others. I believe that I am searching for life giving relationships. In a beautiful presentation by Brené Brown, she offers up the idea that relationships are what gives life meaning. While on the topic of life-giving relationships, she says, “By the time you’re a social worker for 10 years, you http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html realize that connection is why we’re all here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives” (“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE Week One). I’ve found this quote to be especially relevant within my own life. The strong and healthy connections that we share with others are what make us human. Without love for others, there would be no happiness or even any other emotions. Without relationships with other people, as sad as it may sound, life seems meaningless. During my senior year of high school, I looked to help myself better my relationships with others in order to find happiness. This took the place of finding people that made me happy. I began to discover who my real friends were and who I truly enjoyed spending time with. I began to spend more time with my family, especially with my grandparents and cousins. When I spend time with these people, I make sure to truly engage and connect with them. By connecting ourselves with people that we love, life finds meaning and we find happiness. However, there is always another side to relationships. When we are stuck spending time with people that hurt us, there can be a detrimental effect. “You may think toxic friendships are limited to a high school Mean Girls scenario, but anyone who’s arrived in adulthood knows finding quality friendships is not easy” (“5 Signs You’re In a Toxic Friendship” by Olivia T. Taylor - Moreau FYE Week Four). Olivia Taylor explains the value of finding meaningful relationships and the difficulty in doing so. When I was a sophomore in high school, I was part of a group of friends who I didn’t really like. Eventually, me and my true friends found out they were talking behind our backs. Instead of making a dramatic scene, we stopped hanging out with them. Once we left the toxic relationship, we were all just so much happier. We didn’t have to spend time putting up with all of their arguments and fusses. This is why it’s important to stay away from toxic relationships. While it may seem that more friends is always a positive, toxic relationships can do much more harm than we think. https://youtu.be/X4Qm9cGRub0 https://grottonetwork.com/navigate-life/relationships/signs-of-toxic-friendships/ I believe that my community should work to help others. In a very powerful video Father McCormick says that “The greatest journey that you will ever go on is one of self discovery. On this journey success, productivity and failure are an afterthought. What truly matters is authentically responding as the person you best know yourself to be. To do this we need a framework to live our lives” (“The Role of Faith in Our Story” by Father McCormick - Moreau FYE Week Three). Father McCormick gives us this very valuable advice and tells us that we must love others that are most in need. Our world is flawed, hungry, thirsty, and imprisoned. Just like having a framework for fixing knots in our shoes, we need a framework to live our lives. In our daily lives, our different faith journeys are all unique. We need to trust and remain hopeful when we bring faith into our lives. By bringing this element of faith into our lives, we can better ourselves in order to help others. With faith on our side, one such way that we can help the world is through education. Father Moreau calls education “a work of the resurrection,” “A work of life out of death” (“Two Notre Dames- Your Holy Cross Education” by Father Kevin Grove - Moreau FYE Week Five). Education leads us away from the darkness of ignorance and sin and brings us to new lives. Education is extremely uplifting and can bring communities closer and break down barriers that can separate us. People begin to commit to integrity and values in society. This education can then unite us as we journey on our joint goal that is heaven. Notre Dame priests are committed to change and to making the world a better place. By spreading the gift of education, we can bring communities together for the better. This is why it’s so imperative to help others. When we do this, we not only better the person being helped, but we better ourselves. I believe that it is extremely important to value ourselves and others. In a ted talk on one-sided stories, Chimamanda Adichie says “All I had heard about them was how poor they https://youtu.be/lcZMeqWWOIs https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Embed.aspx?id=859bc1a8-0d0f-4eb4-a1c1-d0a45c429187 were, so it was impossible to see them as anything but poor. That poverty was my single story of them” (“Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Adichie - Moreau FYE Week Seven). When being told a story about a poor family, Adichie is blinded to the truth about them. Growing up, I’ve found that most of our perceptions of the world are based upon our parents' teachings. We might view another culture differently due to this fact. As Adichie says, her experiences as a child in Nigeria were not much different than other children in the United States. We are all people and sometimes these teachings corrupt our images of other people. Even though civil rights have come so far, so many children grow up thinking that particular cultures are inferior to their own or live incredibly different lives. For example, in elementary school, I was always told to eat my food because “people in Africa are starving.” This leads to some people having a completely one sided story of Africa that it’s a completely poverty stricken nation. It’s important that we see other people for who they truly are. While it’s important to value others, it’s equally important to fully value ourselves. David Brooks offers up a scenario where we place our values in the wrong things and are left broken. “We happen to live in a society that favors Adam 1 and often neglects Adam 2. That turns you into a shrewd animal. You treat life as a game, and you become a cold calculating creature” (“Should You Live For Your Resume or Your Eulogy” by David Brooks - Moreau FYE Week Two). When we place our value in life in things such as relationships, we are left much happier. Root beliefs are so important in our lives because they serve as goals and ideals for us. When we discover what we truly believe and work towards it, life becomes a lot easier. By following our root beliefs, life becomes worth living. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlLWTeApqIM