Evaluate a Significant Experience, Achievement, Risk You Have Taken

Soraya Palmer Connecticut College, Class of 2007 Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you Finding Truths In my life, I have taken many journeys with forth which I would not have undergo important truths. My father started us off early, taking us on many journeys to help us understand that true knowledge comes only from experience.We took trips all(prenominal) winter break to Madrid, Mexico, Costa Rica, and to Jamaica and Trinidad, my parents homeland for Christmas. Silly things I remember from those trips include the mango chili sauce on the pork in Maui, the name calling of the women who gave out the towels by the pools in Selva Verde, Costa Rica, eating dinner at 10 p. m. in Spain. These were all touring car experiences that I, at first, found spellbinding. My truths were the truths of the tourist brochures beautiful hotels, beaches, and cities.I did not see the blindfolds. I did not appreciate how being held hostage by the beauty of the surfacethe beaches and citiesblinded me to the absence of Puerto Rican natives on the streets of San Juan I did not understand how the prevalence and familiarity of English conspired to veil the beauty of the Spanish language beneath volumes of English translations. I learned more about these truths in my sophomore year of high school, when I was among a group of students selected to visit Cuba.My grandmother was born in Cuba, yet I had never thought to search my own heritage. I have remained the naive American who saw Castro as some distant enemy of my country, accepting this as fact because this seemed to be the certain wisdom. I soon became intrigued, however, with this supposed plague to my freedom, my culture, and everything good and decent. I began to think, just what is communism anyway? Whats so bad about Castro and Cubaand I figure they have good coffee.I believed that what was missing was a lack of understanding between our tw o cultures, and that acceptance of our differences would come only with knowledge. My first impression of Cuba was the absence of commercialism. I saw no giant golden arch enticing hungry Cubans with beef-laced fries I did see billboards of Che Guevara and signposts exhorting unity and love. I realized, however, that much of the uniqueness that I relished here might be gone if the trade blockades in Cuba were ever lifted. The parallels and the irony were not lost on me.Read also Glengarry Glen Ross by David MametI was stepping out of an American political cave that shrouded the beauty of Cuba and stepping into another, one built on patriotic socialism, one where truths were just as ideological as, yet very different from, mine. History, I recognized, is never objective. The journeys I have taken have been colored by my prior experiences and by what my feelings were in those moments. Everyone holds a piece of the truth. Maybe facts wear thint matter. Perhaps my experience is my tru th and the more truths I hear from everyone else, the closer I go forth get to harmonization.Maybe there is no harmony, and I essential go through life challenging and being challenged, perhaps finding perspectives from which I can extractbut never calltruth. I essential simply find ways to understand others, to seek in them what is gross to us all and perhaps someday find unity in our common human bond. This is what life has taught me so far, my sum of truths gleaned from experiencing many cultures. I dont know if these truths will hold, but I hope that my college experience will be like my trip to Cubachallenging some truths, strengthening others, and helping me experience new ones.