OUR DEEDS DETERMINE US, AS MUCH AS WE DETERMINE OURSELVES.

The world we see is shaped by thought,
yet in its web, our minds are caught.

 

[SITUATION:]

Judge’s Son (JAY): You still read those court files? After all these years?

Judge (CAROL): Some cases never leave you. Not because of what they were… but because of who you became after them.

JAY: You mean who you chose to become.

CAROL: Yes. And who those choices made me. We think we shape our actions, Jay. But they shape us too—quietly, deeply.

JAY: So what does that make us? Puppets of our past?

CAROL: No. Just humans… carrying the weight of what we’ve done, and what it’s done to us.

[cue in imaginary lightning]

JAY: Maybe, it’s time you decide what you should do next.

 

[ESSAY:]

Carol the Judge and her son Jay, set quite the mood. Haha, but the actual point of this whole thing is for a clear message to pass through our minds. And, that is that our deeds determine us, but those deeds are also determined by us. Didn’t understand it at first glance, did you? Expected, it’s a rhetorical figure called chiasmus, where the concept is repeated in a reverse order. See, what I mean from the earlier statement is that, The deeds that we perform determine what kind of a person we are. Got it? Good.

Now, as Benjamin Franklin said, It takes a lot of good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to screw it all. From a mother’s gentle arms to the feel of the wooden casket buried in a graveyard, the life of every individual is a string which has many decorations hung on it. These decorations are our deeds, or the decisions we make which shape a part of our reality. It is our own deeds, nobody else’s, not your parents, not your best friend, not your friends’, no, yours, which shape us, in every and any manner possible till death. But, these same deeds, since they are only yours, reflect your ideology and behaviour. If I had to give an example to make you understand, I’d relate it to our era.

·         A recent anime that I watched, Haikyuu!, stars the main character as Shoyou Hinata, a short guy with orange hair and a whole tank of enthusiasm, but he can get scary at times. He ignores his short height and looks on to his skills, his stamina, his raw agility. He takes a lot of risk doing moves nobody would wanna try, and he fails to disappoint his team. And, he takes these risks, putting all his trust on his reflexes and on his teammates. These risks are his deeds, and it shapes him.

 

·         Another example, would be from the poem Road Not Taken. See how Robert Frost gets stuck in a dilemma, after seeing two pathways. The way his choice was made, his deed was performed, shaped him into who he is today and reflected his personality and charisma.

 

We take risks, we make crucial decisions and we make a single mistake and start crying over it. STOP! It’s perfectly normal human nature. Have you never heard, to err... is human. Of course, once these choices convert to deeds, they become expensive to handle, if a bad deed. These deeds reflect everything that we feel after making a decision, stress, anxiety, depression, mental pain, overthinking, confusion, you name it.

But, everything can be cured. Well, not everything, there are some incurable diseases, but that’s not the point. The point is that there is a cure to prevent such stress getting to our heads, and make a heavy impact – for good or for bad. Think about the pros and cons about what you are going to do. Feel and go through every scenario that could happen due to a single choice. Once you find a suitable outcome, you are ready to choose it, and since you have already anticipated everything that might happen, you will have a less impact if somebody questions you? You’re already prepared.

Not everything is our cup of tea and not everyone is perfect, but our deeds are the one that go a long way. Mahatma Gandhi, if he hadn’t started all his movements, maybe he wouldn’t be remembered right now as a person who tried to save our British-colonized world. STORY TIME:: There were two friends, Caleb and Jake, who were travelling in a desert. They both stumbled near a tree and rested there for some time. After Jake woke up, he saw that his friend emptied the only water bottle they had. He was angry and hit him, and after calming down, wrote on the sand somewhere, “My friend emptied the only water bottle we had.” They started travelling again on the rough sand, and stumbled at an oasis. They put down their bags nearby, and jumped in the pool and started playing. Jake suddenly lost control and started drowning. Caleb saved him and brought him to shore. Jake, after confirming he was okay, went to a nearby rock, and wrote, ”I had almost drowned and died today, if not for my friend.” When Caleb asked why he was writing such messages, Jake replied that when they fought, he wrote in the sand, so that the memory could be washed away. But, when he saved his life as a friend, he wrote it on stone and burned it in his mind, so that he could never forget it. A true story of friendship and about the deeds that Caleb did, were all acknowledged by Jake, and he wrote about it where he thought it could be washed away or be preserved. This is a decision that strengthened their bond as a friend. It is our deeds that reflect who we truly are. We need to aim excellency, not perfection. Only then, are we capable of carving our names into the hearts of those people, who remember us, even after death.

Thank you.