Important influences of my life

Important Influences on My Life

My parents have been the most influential people in my life to this day. Teaching me about things I would eventually learn on my own, and teaching me how to find information out for myself, instead of believing whatever I was told without question. I was shown how to wonder, discover, and discuss information and opinions whether they were reliable, true, or just different than my own. I feel like talking about my parents in this way is like writing their names down as references for a job application because I didn’t have any others. In this case, my parents are not my scapegoat subject, as choosing to write about parents may be for others, but rather the truth as to the explanation of how I became the person I am today.

In my generation as a child, most kids grew up watching television day and night, listening and watching any and everything that would jump out of that box. Although my T.V. time was limited when I was little, I can relate to this, but with a better ending than most kids who believed everything they saw on T.V. Every night my parents would make a weekday habit of having a nice family dinner with The Nightly News with Jim Lehrer playing along in the background. If for some reason we didn’t have anything to talk about at the table that night, we would scramble up our own personal opinionated conversations from whatever was going on in the news at the time. Hearing the ways my parents openly discussed political views and expressions influenced me more than I ever knew.

Yes, they are liberal parents, but not the stereotypical liberals to say the least. They believe in liberalism where you have the freedom to believe in whatever you want as long as you have some sort of creditable argument or information to base your viewpoints on. This kind of dialogue was where I first experienced the Socratic manner of learning without even knowing it at the time. I learned about this manner of investigation more formally this year in class. I now carry it with me in every aspect of life. Questioning that which doesn’t make sense, for better or worse, eventually leads to the truth, and that is what I like to strive towards.

The other thing my parents love to do besides debating world policy and politics is to travel. Covering twelve countries before the age of 14 definitely aided my efforts to discover the huge amount of diversity this world has to offer. Experiencing a half dozen cultures taught me how to be extremely open-minded towards all ideas and beliefs. Seeing how much freedom we really do have compared to other countries makes me happy to know that we still have the power to
influence and change our political way of life for the better of our society if we want it bad enough.

With the philosophy that I have developed with my parents’ heavy influence, I believe that I can do anything I set my mind to do. Heading to the University of Oregon with the mindset I have now, is going to be an exciting adventure in a new way and I am confident that I can be successful in any area I choose to study. I hope you think so, too.

Submitted by Samuel C.L. Chapman, Dec. 30, 2007