Discipline
I met my return to school with a bleak outlook. It was the spring semester of my second year at the college level. Sitting in my first class with no sense of purpose for attending. Feeling an underlying sentiment to be negative, I was thinking about how I had done very poorly in school. Suddenly the teacher said, “Study the discipline of politics.” That day sitting in class it hit me. It was as if a beam of self-awareness, or a sudden understanding, had overcome me. Previously I had never visualized discipline as a positive thing. Imagining discipline as means toward self-improvement, and as a kind of knowledge was unusual for me. Discipline was, traditionally, punishments received after doing something wrong.
Having just started my junior year in highschool, my grandfather passed away. This had a profound impact on my life. I began spinning into a whirlwind of rebellion. My grandfather and I were fiercely close. We had just returned from a trip to florida two weeks prior which was absolutely amazing. One week after we returned, he departed on a road trip with his brother, my great-uncle, to go search out our family genealogy. Midway through the trip they were out having dinner in Kansas City, Missouri. Suddenly, my grandfather started complaining of a terrible headache. After a short period my grandfather collapsed.
Paramedics rushed him in an ambulance to the hospital. After suffering a stroke, the doctor resuscitated him and they put my grandfather on life support. About a week after the doctors stabilized him, they transported him back to California where we got to go visit him. He looked terrible, they shaved his head for the surgery, the stroke disfigured his face from the loss of muscle control and he could not speak because of the ventilator. I remember feeling very sorry for him. Before the stroke he was a very proud looking man, he stood tall, straight up and always looked his best. Now the stroke had weakened him, hunched over, and not aware of his surroundings he seemed miserable. Having witnessed this, I remember being very bitter toward life. I questioned how this could happen to a man, who throughout his life had done what was right for everyone he knew, especially his family. Shortly after running away from home, I started taking drugs, drinking, and stopped attending school. It was as though nothing in life really mattered, and my vision for the future had become unclear. I remember being so very mad at everybody and wondering what had been done to deserve this. Very self-centered I acknowledge, but tragedy does that. In hindsight it was really a shame because I had burned so many relationships with friends and family. Yet really I was the person who got hurt the most. Ultimately I really thought my life was going nowhere. With no direction, no discipline, I had no respect for life.
Nevertheless, really my perception had been all wrong. The necessary thing to do was to impose order on my life. Learning to have self-control and direct my life in a positive direction. Gaining control demanded me to obtain a proper education. As humans, especially myself, we neglect or forget what our focus is. Losing clarity in life humbled me. It challenged my self-confidence, and that frightened me. Perhaps that is why I was rebellious. I could not help but feel at an arrant disadvantage of achieving a higher education. I cared to achieve and could complete the classes. However, my mentality lacked the ability to place order and rules upon myself. Hearing my teacher on the first day of school inspired me to impose discipline on my life and follow a passion of mine. That passion is the study of political science. It was then I decided that the purpose in my life would be to invoke positive change in other people’s lives. My sense is that I would best achieve this in an institution that affects everyone: Government.
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