Rising Above

In life, people can knock you down:  Knock you down, kick you, and leave you with a smile.  That seems to be the motives behind the slave owners in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave.  The graphic details of these people goes way beyond my level of thinking...I guess my brain just can't wrap around it.  However, Frederick Douglass gave us some valuable information about his life...a life that maybe needed to exist in order to appreciate what we have today and how we live today.  It seems as if he was given enough power to carry on through his pain in order to educate the world...an education that is so honest and pure. "Douglass casts his life as a long process of self-transformation--from an object, or an animal, to a free human being with a name" (Douglass 234).  This quote alone let us know of his inner drive to become someone...to go beyond the life he has lived and strive for something more.  We may not all like where we come from or how we live...what matters is the drive inside you to want to become more.  Douglass did not blame his life and his career as a slave, on the contrary he seemed to embrace what he went through to better himself and others.  "As in rags-to-riches stories, Douglass tells us how he makes a dramatic rise in social status and wealth through virtues such as perseverance  bravery, self-reliance, and determination" (Douglass 235)  "...self-transformation in which the illiterate and unthinking slave is prompted to recognize the injustice of his experience and to insist on his full person-hood, but Douglass reminds us many times along the way that self-transformation always involves a set of opportunities, and that under slightly different conditions, this slave might never have sought out his freedom" (Douglass 235).  This has been an encouraging story for me.  I choose not see this story as a story of hate...or black and white. I see a wonderful story or Resurrection from an old life to a new life.  That fits my life right now.  I was getting knocked down and I chose to make a change and start a new life.  And just knowing what Frederick went through as a slave and more, helps me to stay focused on what I need to do to keep my life going.