Joyas Voladoras Essay Response

After reading this essay I feel that it had a very negative and discouraging  message. This essay was basically saying that no matter what you do to try to save your heart from pain, its still going to get hurt.  This quote proves what I'm saying. "You can brick your heart up as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and it comes down in an instant....."  I think that sends a very pessimistic message. It's almost warning you that you will get hurt despite everything you try to do to stop it.  After reading this I feel that its not worth it to try to keep my heart safe.  It makes me want to stop trying to save myself all the hurt that I will experience in life.  Now I guess I understand that you can never possibly stop yourself from being hurt.  Maybe you can lock your heart up so it's not effected by some things but then something will happen completely unexpected and your barrier will come down.  I'm done trying to lock my heart up and keep it safe.  I undertsand now that I can never truly protect my heart from everything.

Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen

The song Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen has a lot of great advice.  One of my favorite pieces is
"Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young."  This is a great piece of advice because you should never continue to hold on to people that don't appreciate you.  You should also never let go of people who really love and care for you.  This is an important piece of advice that as soon as people understand this, the happier they will be.  My other favorite piece of advice is "Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good Be nice to your siblings, they're your best link to your past And the people most likely to stick with you in the future."  I like this piece of advice because it basically says how important your parents and siblings are.  I have a brother and although we don't get along but I don't know what I would do without him.  Same with my parents.  We often have different view points but I would be devastated to lose them.  This song has a lot of great advice that I'm going to try to follow.
I also have my own piece of advice to add.  All I have to say is eat healthy and stay in shape.  Don't pollute your body with unhealthy substances if you expect to live past 40.  Exercising and eating healthy will make you look and feel younger.  You will need your body in the future so it's no use destroying it when your young.  I know as a kid everyone wants to look skinny, but when it comes down to it staying in shape is a lot harder than it seems.  That would definitely be my top piece of advice to give other people.

What's worth knowing?

Schools teaches us a variety of different skills but somehow manage to  skip over the most important ones.  Sure we're taught math, writing and reading but we're not taught how to communicate our feelings or read other peoples expressions. School teaches us all the academic knowledge we need to know but fails to teach us any social knowledge.  By sitting in school everyday I'm not learning how to tell someone how I feel or how to understand what someone means just by looking at their face.  Now both those skills are extremely important but their not taught at school.  Sure people say you can't survive in the world without knowing math or learning to write but how can you survive never being able to tell someone how you feel or never being able to understand if a person is upset.  I believe that being able to read peoples expressions is immensly important and yet its never taugth to us.  Neil Gaimen was completely right when he said that schools don't teach us alot of stuff thats worth knowing.  As he said before they dont teach you how to love or how to be rich or poor.  Yet, arguably those are two important skills that will help you later in life.  I want to know why schools skip over such important information.  How are we suppose to go into life with such huge gaps in our  education?  How are we ever going to learn to love and trust someone if its not taught?  Maybe its assumed that we will pick it up on our own but that's not always the case. School needs to teach us  these things or atleast have them explained to us.