Personal Narrative: My Beliefs

Everyone on earth is defined by their core beliefs. It’s what makes us all individuals, what separates us from the others. It wasn’t until I was talking with my friend Sean in 8th grade that I started to realize that one of my core beliefs, something I was taught growing up, may not be my own belief.

Hi iam Edgardo Flores i was born in casa grande, az not that far away from our state capital,Phoenix, Az.theres nothing better to do in a hot summer than going out with the friends to a lake and have a blast riding jet skis boats and my favorite, swimming!My activites of the day are shooting,riding horses,and my favorite one is quad riding.Thats right! ive been doing these fun exciting hobbies since i was 9 years old.pretty young huh?

I have never been asked a more challenging question than “what is your core belief?”. I know what motivates me and I know what I am passionate about, but what I truly believe was tough. I spent about two weeks trying to figure it out and I what I truly believe in is happiness. Maybe that is not an answer that one would expected, but at the root of every belief that I have happiness exist. Happiness is what motivates me the most.

Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

Some people are born with talents, others with brains, and some with beauty. However, I would like to think I was born with all the above, but most of all I was born with the innate gift of serving others. While growing up as a preacher’s kid, I witnessed my father help others by empowering them, motivating them, and praying for them. Observing how supportive my dad was of others I thought I want to do the same thing, but I knew I did not want to be a preacher. Growing up as a beautician’s daughter, I watched my mother improve others by building their self-esteem, being a listening ear, and sharing knowledge when necessary. I recall looking at my mother thinking I want to be that type of person when I grow up. I lacked the talents and creativity

My grandparents on my mother side are both Christians. Since I was 5, they had told me many stories from the Bible such as: God created the world, God loves all the people including me, and God gives his only son to save us. Even though I didn’t fully understand the truths about God in that time, these messages had heavily influenced me on building my worldview.

When I was 12 years old, and my grade wasn’t promising. My parents all blame me, but never encourage me to bring it back up, so for a year my grade never changed. During that year my mom treat me like I wasn't her son. Me and my mom fight almost every day. The next year, everything was the same. My grade was still on the ground, until the next semester my friend encourage me and helped me to bring my grades up. They tried to help me and try to convince me to compete with them so I can bring my grades up faster. When I was 7 years old, there was a bully back in China who was in 6 grade. He beat up first, second, and third graders. I told my parents so they can do something about it, but they thought I was talking about a third grader, so they say to deal with the problem myself. For a year he was still bullying people, so my friend courage me to go with them so that we can tell the teacher. The teacher didn't do anything about it, some and my friend brought bats and beat him up. Some of my friend got hurt pretty bad, but we got him into the hospital, and after that he stopped bullying people.

Dealing with different beliefs through my childhood friend from elementary was difficult concept to handle. At first, we were two peas in a pod, and practically consider each other as twins because we both love the same things. However as we grew older, we both began having our own opinion and this soon turned into heated arguments.

Even though I got caught going against religious beliefs, morals, and values taught to me since I was able to process and understand what exactly was being said to me, I now feel a relief that I took a stand for myself and understand what I personally believe in as an individual.

I grew up in a Hispanic Catholic household. In my younger years my family attended a Catholic church every Sunday, and my sister and I also went to Sunday school right before the service started. As a child, I didn't really think about church and the idea of religion because I mostly just followed the beliefs of the adults around me. To me, church and Sunday school were just things that my parents required me to go to. My older sister on the other hand, did not really appreciate the idea of church and Christianity and I really did not understand why she didn't want to go to church or just listen to my parents. Over time I learned that she considered herself an atheist and she had always questioned religion and most importantly Christianity. About the same time, my family stopped attending church and we disconnected ourselves from religion. I was still use to my mother praying during meals and speaking about God but we never took the time

As the doors opened I saw the white ceramic floor, the red and grey lockers, and the alphabetically arranged hallways. I was in an American High school. At this moment a jolt of energy gushed through me and made me feel on top of the world, however as the day progressed, my head started to observe the ceramic floor more than the diverse group of people in this school. I felt like I was an “inbetweener” and I am not even bi-racial. This feeling of being an outcast made me homesick. A few months into the school year my English Two teacher gave me a book called “The Gifted Hands.” It was after reading this book, about Ben Carson, I realized I am not the only kid in high school that is feeling out of place. I learned that although our experiences might differ, we were all students trying to skip these few years and become a senior.

One day, coming back from a half-day at school, I arrive at my house only to hear a crashing noise. At first my mom thought that my dog was stuck in an area in our house, but then we walked in. The back window was broken, and there was glass, a rock, and dirt all over the carpet. I walk to my room and see a redheaded teenager running away from our house. I only saw a bit of his face when he turned around to look back at the house one more time. I noticed that he was wearing a green shirt, a green backpack, and some blue jeans. A couple minutes later, my mom called 911. When the police arrived, they asked me to tell them everything that I saw. From facial features, to the freckles on his face. Once I gave them the description, they put me and my mom in the police car and took me on a drive to find him…

Racing at night going One-hundred and forty miles an hour on US-27 holding the lead, Shift six gear, speed topped out at two-hundred miles per hour passing by cars smoothly. I chanted I am immortal, I am a god! while I pushed my sports bike to its limit. Suddenly a black car approaches. WHAM! I get Rammed from behind and lose control of my bike slamming into a Semi-truck up ahead. Lights out. When I peeked my eyes, I saw 4 humans around me. Thump after thumb I believe I was in an ambulance rushing down the turnpike. I looked around and the first words that came to my head are “Rick this is just a dream”. This is the story of how I escaped from an illegal laboratory that clones and modifies humans.

Life can always push you trough big changes in any instant of your life. I honestly would have never thought that at this very young and short age my life would have changed the way it did, to be completely honest it was truly a blessing. I had been born and raised going to a catholic church with my parents and sister, every Sunday at eight a.m. My family and i would be at church, it was only an hour long and it always went by really fast actually. I know my parents only wanted the best for me and my sister, to be raised by a good family that believed in God, but to be honest as i grew older it started just becoming a habit to be at church every Sunday, of course my parents hoped for me to actually learn something every time

First off you can't force anyone to believe in the same beliefs as you. What we can really do is just influence people into doing so. I believe in standing up for myself and my beliefs. A very importants teacher in elementary once told me “ if you don't stand for something , you will fall for anything. I used to allow people walk all over me now i refuse to be that person.