“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” This quote by Franklin Roosevelt speaks to the core of my personality. Have you ever noticed that a simple act of kindness can change the attitude hostile person? Growing up in Queens, New York I have learned this lesson time and time again. I still remember the cold and lonely feeling that walking crowded city streets would instill on me. A feeling of happiness comes over me when I think back on the warm family atmosphere that I grew up in. There’s more to it than that; a smile creeps up on my face when I think of the secret that only I know, the ability to change the past! I often think back about the things that made me who I am, and who I may become.
One of the most influential personalities has been my father. Times were changing quickly during by childhood, but old traditions and values remained the same in my household. My father would leave for work every morning before sunrise, and return home after dark. Never once did I hear him complain about the way things were. My fondest memories of him were during the family picnics we would have. I still remember how his tired; stern face would become young and lively while spending time with the family. When I use my abilities to alter time, the changes become reality to the people affected by it. My father would take all the kids with him to collect firewood and play games with us to make it fun. Not long ago, my father called me and said he had taken my mother to the picnic site. He told me “Brian, you know that damn picnic site supplies wood bedsides all of the barbecues. It was never there for us”! I just laughed and said “maybe someone new how much we enjoyed getting it ourselves”. The ways that he took care of his family, through the good times and bad were an example of his pathos.
At sixteen years old, I chose to run away from home. There was a goodbye note written in my top draw, the bags were packed under the bed, and cab money was in the folds of my wallet. This was it, time to creep down the stairs and out the front door. Every sound was amplified ten times, so that first step on those creaky stairs startled even me. I kept going, slow and steady, step after step. Then it happened like a sudden eruption of thunder, “RING-RING-RING”! The phone was ringing, what was I going to do! Then it stopped. Knowing that I couldn’t go back up I rushed down the stairs to find my father holding the phone. His voice was calm and kept a steady tone, but the picture in my head was not so peaceful. My father taught me a lesson that night, but it was a lesson in ethos. Something that I never knew was, when he was seventeen, he also ran away from home. Just hearing his story was like looking into myself. He proved himself a credible source on just how difficult a path I had chosen. He told me that he had received a phone call earlier telling him to wait up for an important phone call at 1:35 AM. “No one spoke when I picked up” he said. I did not leave home that day and never did think about it again.
There are times when people need encouragement, times when they need to hear the truth, and times where they just need comfort. At the age of eighteen, I was just graduating from high school. There was a girl at graduation with tears running down her face, immediately I knew it was my ex-girlfriend. As I would for anyone, I went up and asked if she was alright. She said “I just took a home pregnancy test and I am pregnant”. I remembered the night we broke up. I drove her home and walked her up to her front door. When I got back to my car it would not start. I fussed with it for a while in the dark, when all of a sudden it was lit up by the lights of a SUV pulling in behind me. My ex ran out, jumped in the SUV, and kissed the driver. I guess I was not supposed to have left already.
Growing up there was never a Sunday that my mother missed going to church. She would tell us “you need a good moral center, without it you are lost.” My mother’s moral leadership was an example of ethos as a caretaker and educator. Talking about premarital sex and underage, unwed pregnancy was not a conversation that I wanted to have with her, but I did want to tell her the news I had just heard. We were in the kitchen, meatballs were cooking in pasta sauce, it was warm out but there was a cool breeze lifting up the curtains. I can remember every detail about that day. She heard what I had to say and all she did was hug me. I can imagine how this news came across to a devout catholic, but the emotions she showed that day were of a mother loving her child. She was so proud of me for making smart decisions. At that time she taught me an important lesson in pathos, as it pertains to being a parent.
In recent years I have matured a little. Learning from mistakes, I am able to take the stubborn New Yorker and hard worker, combining them into who I am now. This did not come about without a work though. It was about this time that I met a woman who called herself Sway. She used logos to teach me how to accept what I could not change. I began to see myself differently, and not to long after my actions emulated my thoughts. One time, she gave me a group of tasks, half were tedious and half were enjoyable. Although it did not seem like it, they both took the same amount of time to complete. She showed me that our minds could play tricks on the way we look at work, and that I like to procrastinate a lot. Everything leads to something else so there are never any closed doors. Those were not the only lessons I learned though. She would also teach me about my abilities to defy the barriers of time. Sway had abilities to manipulate time also, but even at the early stages of my training we both realized that my abilities were greater. She taught me and then one day she was just gone. This was an example of logos as an instructor. Using facts, she taught me to take everything with a smile and move on, because sooner or later I would catch up with time.
Every day people are influenced by things that change who they are. I do not know who has had the greatest influence in my life, but I am glad that they have lead me to where I am. We all hope that our children do not make the same mistakes as us, but if they do than we will be there to influence them as positively as possible. Weather that influence comes from a mysterious instructor, the car breaking down at just the right time, a late night phone call, or some missing firewood; just know that someone is watching over them. In the mean time, make sure to bring a positive attitude and happiness to the things you do, because you never know who you are influencing?
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