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Life Lessons Analysis

Decent Essays

Lessons. Dreams. Goals. We have all had them. In fact, they are even in reading. Specifically, I recall “The inheritance of tools” by Scott R. Sanders and Annie Dillard’s story “The Chase.” Through their morals, these stories have shown me my life through a different pair of glasses.
Throughout my entire life my father has taught me a bountiful amount of lessons. Being a scrawny 12-year-old that could barely lift more than 50 pounds, my father put me to work by having me help him finish the basement. Through that time, there were many excruciating lessons, for instance, learning how to cut sheetrock, or how to measuring. I never worked a day in my life up until this moment and my father knew that I had no experience as well. So he first started …show more content…

Upon finishing, I looked at it and I couldn’t be more proud of myself. Although, when my dad saw the finished product, he was left without words, telling me to put it up against the wall — only to show me that I cut the sheetrock upside down. He told me that I had to look at the end result before continuing with my actions, if I didn’t look into the future I would end up with a nasty result. In the same way, Sanders’ story “Tools” is one of inheritance, however, it is an inheritance of something far deeper. As Sanders recalls a moment when he was learning to use the hammer; his father tells him to “Look at the head, . . . Don’t look at your hands, don’t look at the hammer. Just look at the head of that nail and pretty soon you’ll learn to hit it square” (Sanders 215). Sanders has extraordinary value towards the hammer. Although of great value, this was not the only tool; Sanders tells us about the times he is in the garage with his father, how he learned to put pieces of wood together and begin to learn more and more about carpentry. The memories and lessons passed down from generations, surely, this put a different meaning to the word inheritance and the tools. The inheritance were the memories, the lessons, and the knowledge. …show more content…

He was my past science teacher, Algrim; he never aged, tall, with a partially bald head, and he had the most perfect structure a runner should have. After noticing me, he asked if I wanted to try out cross country and see if I’d like it, so I did. In fact, I fell in love with the sport. However, there were some issues; I had never done long distance in my entire life, that being said it was a painful procedure to get into shape. Constantly at work trying to get better, I was always getting tired faster than most people. I had no clue on to what the reason was, I even went the extra mile to see if there was wrong with me by going to a chiropractor. The chiropractor only found one small detail that makes a huge difference, I was flat footed. Of course I overreacted. I blamed my times on my feet time after time. Then, one day I came to the realization that I couldn’t accuse something that I was born with stop me. I pushed myself more than I ever had, I would run more than what I needed, I was determined. So when I read Dillard’s story “The Chase” it struck a nerve. When Dillard stated what all football players knew, “that you have to fling yourself at what you’re doing, you have to point yourself, forget yourself, aim, dive” (Dillard 85), this gave me a

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