Cool children's reading
【Pingliang Yueyuan】 Yang Jiaqi (Lingtai County Zhongtai Town, Xiaotai Primary School): Toward the side of the light - "When You Fly Like a Bird to Your Mountain" after reading
—— "When You Fly Like a Bird to Your Mountain" after reading
Lingtai County Zhongtai Town Kotai Primary School Yang Jiaqi
It is a miracle that a girl who never went to school before the age of seventeen was admitted to Harvard University and eventually became a Doctor of History at Cambridge University, and she was Tara Westover, an American female writer named "Influential Person of the Year" by Time Magazine. She was born into a nightmare family of origin, but through education, she completed a thrilling self-redemption. I initially thought it was an ordinary novel, but as I read it, I gradually realized that it was a true story, and I couldn't help but feel shocked and frightened. Even when I read about the strange car accidents and burn accidents, my throat was dry and I felt that something was blocking my breathing. Growing up in a family of fear, distortion, autism, brutality, and paranoia is a miracle in itself, and Tara magnifies that miracle even more infinitely.
1
Try to get out of the shackles of life
Tara was born in a garbage dump under Buck Peak Mountain in Idaho, USA, with piles of debris piled up in the center of the yard: leaking car batteries, tangled insulated copper wires, discarded transmissions, rusty corrugated tin, old-fashioned faucets, broken radiators... There is no end, no shape, no mess. In order to make a living, she had to go to his junkyard with her father to sort the waste, but the first time she went to the junkyard to work, she was about to bend down and reach for a copper coil, and she was almost hit by a giant that her father threw at her, and when she tried to turn around to see what it was, she was hit in the stomach by a steel cylinder. Dad didn't care, and still threw the rotten iron until she shouted at him, "Hey, Dad, I'm here!" Dad noticed her and went back to work. She almost collapsed to death in the carriage when she helped her father load scrap iron, but fortunately only let a long steel nail pierce into the calf. Countless times witnessing herself and her family's bloody wounds, broken fingers from time to time and severe burns, made her think that this was the original order of the world, her childhood was wrapped in cruelty and filth, accidents could come at any time, and what was more frightening was that any pain could only be healed by itself with time, which made people feel unimaginable. Father did not allow everyone to have their own voice, which in his eyes was a symbol of the devil.
Her mother, a herbalist and midwife, was cowardly and submissive, and she often followed her mother to deliver babies when she was a child, because her mother was not licensed and took great risks every time she delivered. After a car accident, my mother suffered a serious brain injury, a swollen and deformed head, and even deliriousness, but instead of being taken to the hospital, she was placed in the basement because no one believed in the doctors and the hospital, "whether you can survive or not, it is only God's will." Seeing her face getting darker and swollen day by day, it was surprising that she slowly got better, the after-effects of the car accident led to severe migraines, in order to alleviate her migraines, her mother began to be keen on the production of essential oils and medicinal tinctures, and invented the "muscle test" therapy, and later became an expert in this area, and developed into a small family business.
Her brother Luke was badly burned in both legs while cutting the fuel tank with her father, the accident was shocking, she put her brother's legs into the water-filled garbage bin to help relieve the pain, and then her mother treated him with a homemade ointment, at that time I once again doubted that her brother should die, but he stubbornly survived. The accidents in the book constantly refresh my understanding of the endurance of life.
Her family believed in Mormonism, and her father believed that "schools are puppets of the government, and homeschooling is God's purpose." So the children were all home-schooled, and Tara hadn't been to school until she was seventeen. My father suffered from severe bipolar disorder, so he was paranoid, manic, feeling good about himself, and suffering from delusions of victimization. He even imagined the details of the persecution of his neighbor by the government, which forced his children to go to school, so Tara and his family had to keep canning, guns and gasoline in order to be ready to go up the mountain to avoid manhunting.
My mother always advocated, "Medicine is a special poison that will slowly corrupt you for the rest of your life." So when Tara had a hard toothache in college, she also refused to take painkillers, and that toothache tormented her for nearly a year. With her right foot broken thumb, she survived a winter and worked as usual, perhaps because of the kinds of things she suffered as a child that forged her amazing willpower and allowed her to survive the kind of pain that ordinary people could not endure.
Unable to imagine the double devastation of Tara's body and mind, her brother Sean, after suffering an accident, constantly humiliated her and inflicted violence on her, which caused her great harm, and she finally began to doubt, began to refuse, began to admit, which was also the driving force behind her determination to overturn all the established rules of the family. When a person begins to doubt things that were previously taken for granted, it is not difficult to change. She was finally sure she would leave. "After that night, I had no doubts about whether to go or stay. It's as if we live in the future and I'm long gone. ”
Stepping out of the mountains is the end for her, and it is also the beginning.
2
The only thing you can fully believe in is yourself
No one can help you out of trouble, except yourself.
Brother Sean has a serious violent tendency, often punching and kicking her, and pressing her head into the toilet, and what makes Tara even more uncomfortable is that the informed mother ignores her grievances and chooses silence. The shadow of her original family hung over her, until her brother Taylor proposed to go to school, and eventually escaped from Brigham Young University by self-study, escaping from this hellish family, which brought a glimmer of light to Tara in the confusion and darkness, and her brother told her, "There is a world out there, and if father does not instill his views on you, the world will look very different." ”
She decided to follow in her brother's footsteps and walk out of this suffocating place. However, when she tried her best to come to college, her life was still confused, she was completely overwhelmed, she seemed out of place with her roommate, she did not know to wash her hands when she came out of the bathroom, because her father taught her from an early age that cleanliness is hypocrisy, dirt is honesty, and she seems ignorant and stupid in class. No one can give you the life you want unless you try to fight for it yourself. With her extraordinary talent and hard work, she finally has the right to control her own life. However, even though she has achieved academically impressive achievements, such as a master's degree in philosophy from Harvard University and a doctorate in history from Cambridge University, she still cannot be accepted and recognized by her parents, and she is still struggling with the contradiction between family affection and self-worth. Step by step, she reshapes her life, but at the cost of being seen as a betrayer of her family and breaking with her parents. Fortunately, there was an older brother, Taylor, who gave her comfort and encouragement.
"When I completely accepted my decision, stopped dwelling on old grudges, and stopped weighing his sins against mine, I finally got rid of my guilt." "I learned to accept my own decisions for my own sake, for myself, not for him. For I need to be so, not that he deserves it. "Reconciliation with her father eventually made her a more complete and credible version of herself." You can love someone but still choose to say goodbye to him; you can miss someone every day and still be glad they're out of your life. This is her best annotation to her native family.
Everyone can't choose their own family, the original family may bring us tolerance or narrowness, in any case, out of their own life is the most important. In this world, there has never been a perfect original family. Children born with golden keys are even fewer, most of us are ordinary, parents are just as ordinary as we are, they just give us what they think is the right education. We used to complain that our parents didn't give us enough, not good enough, but how fortunate we were compared to Tara, at least our parents didn't always put us at risk. How tempting your life is, lies in your efforts, turning those past sufferings and happiness into motivation, which will make you truly different.
Dr. Kerry in the book once said, "Whoever you become, whatever you become, that's what you are." The most powerful factor in determining who you are comes from within you. ”
When you are stuck in the trough of life, the only thing that can make you change the status quo is your own efforts.
3
Education gives life more possibilities
"I've been cowardly, broken, self-doubting, something rotten inside me, stinking. Until I escaped the mountains and opened up another world. That is the new world of education for me, the infinite possibilities of my life. ”
Tara had been convinced that she would get married at the age of eighteen or nineteen, that her father would give her a corner of the farm for her and her husband to build her own house, that her mother would teach her about herbs and midwifery, that she would become a midwife, and that there would be no shadow of college in her future. One morning, before Dad got up, her mother said to her, "I thought you were the one who stormed out of here through the raging fire." You don't want to stay, let's go! Don't let anything stop you from going. This was the only time her mother had encouraged her, but it was easy to leave, and for a girl who had never been to school, the trigonometric function was tantamount to a book of heaven, and she used to redouble her efforts to learn. In order to better concentrate before the scrap is exhausted, she gets up at six o'clock every morning to study. Finally, she received an admission letter from Brigham Young University, and her life will begin a new history.
Ignorance made her eager to learn, and poverty made her redouble her efforts. She graduated from college on a full scholarship set up by Bill Gates. He then went on to visit Harvard University and eventually became a PhD in History at Cambridge University. She said: Education is a process of self-discovery.
Education can break your original concepts, enable you to rebuild your understanding of the world, provide you with more and richer information and choices, and let you find the right way to reinvent yourself. The uneducated Tara is just an ignorant girl in the garbage heap, and no one will know that she will become a good scholar. It was education that made her see the difference in the world, broke the terrible situation that her father had created for her, and allowed her to find the meaning of life. Like a beam of light hitting the gold, the gold finally glowed brightly to confirm its own value.
"The past is a ghost, ethereal, has no influence, only the future has weight." Seeing that she can face her future so strongly and optimistically, heartache and respect arise spontaneously, perhaps each of us needs to complete the farewell to her past in order to bravely move into the future.
May you and I both become brave birds and fly to the mountain that belongs to you.