In our society, people have different values and identities. In the writing of “Keeping Close to Home”, Gloria Watkins talks about her believing of our values come from mixtures of influences in out life. And sometime the influence contradict each other. She argued with how her parent’s ambivalence attitude to her love of reading book sended the message of the importance of other knowledge to her. Also her parent’s providing of books helped to build the foundation of her educations. She values her education and also the communication with her family. Watkins use her story as a prove to her point that people’s value come from mixture of influence around them and I believe it is true.
Relationship are an important factor that shaped our society. Like many others, I value my relationships with the peoples around me. A relationship can be friendship, partnership, or relationships with our family. The person who taught me to value relationship is my friend Melody. My valuing of relationship in influenced by Melody’s valuing of relationship. Through out the year we spend together, she teach me that if you value your relationships, you will get help from others, and will not be lonely. I think her point is true, because she value our relationship, so she will do anything for me, in another hand, I feel her valuing, so I will do anything for her too. From her, I learned relationship can be a strong force that connect me to the society. This value of mine is from the influence of others and also the realization of my self. Like Watkins, I have some value that are from the outside too.
Same sex marriage has been a big issue in our society recently. Some people called for same gender marriage, yet some people still strongly opposed. I value the freedom of choosing who to marry. I beileve people could choose who they want to spend their life with. This valur of mine formed from the mix influence of the society. The news of same sex marriage imspired me to think about our freedom to love. From that I realized love can not be circuscribed by sex. The news is only the start of my of understand what same sex relationship is. What made me value the freedom of marriage is the story of Eddie and Josh. I know Eddie and Josh from a video on Youtube. They are a gay couple that plan to get marry. By watching their recording of their preparation to get marry, I see that there is no different between same sex relationship and different sex relationship. Since than, I started to value the freedom of choosing whom to marry, and not be boxed by the idea od only marry the person with opposited gender. Like our president Obama said, “Love is love”, We can not stop love because of same gender. Unlike my valuing relationship, the value of free marriage is influenced by the society, which is a outer influence.
In this society, I have many different identities. On of the identities I value is the identity of a writer. There are two factor that builded up my identity as a writer. one of them is my creativity. I like to create stories, and image the world and the peoples in my story. I like how I can give lives to character with my writing. But having the tension to write does not make me a writer. I believe the most important factor that made me a writer is my readers. If no one reads my stories, I can not call myself a writer. I had been uploading my story on internet, and I have readers that are willing to follow on my story. The writer identity is from them. I can not call myself a writer, but they can call me a writer. I value this identity very much, because I had put effort on it, and I feel proud of myself when readers are waiting to read my stories. My identity are form by my willing of put myself in that position, and also the recognition of the others.
We have different values in our life. They might not be shaped in the same way. My value of relationship is formed by the influence of others and myself; My value of freedom to choose whom to marry is formed by the influence of others only; My identity of a writer is from by myself and others. Like Watkins, I see how values and identities are mixture of influence on us. Now matter how they are formed, we all important them in our life.