"I Am From" Poem

"I Am From" Poem 

I am from hockey sticks

from antibacterial soap and disinfectant wipes

I am from the brick rambler

with a warm vanilla scent

I am from the apple trees

The river birch

whose long gone limbs I remember

as if they were my own.

I am from Christmas gatherings and a large family

from my Dad and little Larky

I’m from hand-me-downs and organic food

and from the nightly news.

I’m from “Santa Claus is coming” and “nice jobs”

and Bob Marley music

I’m from weekends in a hockey arena

I’m from Minnesota and Germany

Pineapple water and tacos

From our trip to Hawaii

with the clear and wavy ocean water

whose pictures are kept close

In my heart forever.  

Happiness in Unexpected Situations

"I, the son of a dear father murther'd,

Prompted by revenge by heaven and hell, 

Must (like a whore) unpack my heart with words 

And fall a-cursing like a very drab, 

A scullion! [...]

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions [...]

Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;

I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,

I know my course. The spirit I have seen

May be a devil; and the devil may hath power" 

-The Tragedy of Hamlet (2.2. 1660-1674)

Grief and sorrow are the backing force behind why people feel that they deserve justice. Grief and sorrow have another side though; they can be formed from guilt. The quote from act 2 scene 2 in The Tragedy of Hamlet, show both sides of grief and sorrow. Hamlet is grieving over the death of his father and he feels that his fathers murder is not just. That feeling of revenge puts him in a position where he wants to get back with his uncle who killed him.  Later in the verse, Hamlet describes his plan to make his uncles guilt come out. Guilt eats you up and causes you to feel sorrow for what you have done in the past. Hamlet has realized this and used it against his uncle. Hamlet's mourning process continues throughout the story.

Grieving and mourning is a long process that brings back memories, and brings along horrible days of mixed emotions. Everybody has a "bad" day every so often, and that is what the mourning process is; an accumulation of bad days back to back. In those days, you say things that you don't mean and you act in ways that you normally wouldn't. Hamlet says that "I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us" (3.1. 1817-1820). Leading up to Hamlet's speaking, he had a relatively bad day. He had taken part in a disagreement with Ophelia who is what he believes to be the love of his life. Hamlet had made this comment about himself that he may not have said if he were in his normal state of mind. 

In this time in the mourning process, everything that at one point made you feel happy, seems to turn against you to become grief . Shakespeare describes this as "The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament" (3.2. 2086-2089). Essentially, this means that grief and joy may bring us to action but, when the feelings of grief or joy are done, our encouragement to continue acting, disappears. This causes us to realize that joy turns into grief.

Nobody can go through life only grieving over the death of somebody such as a father or mother, nor could they go through life having endless joy. Everybody gets hit with melancholy or happiness at least once in their life. This is the cycle of mourning. You experience grief, sorrow, guilt, revenge, justice, and finally, happiness. Bad times start the mourning cycle, and good times end it. Each time something major happens negatively to you, the process restarts. You will find happiness once again though. The No Fear Shakespeare version of The Tragedy of Hamlet, says that "Joy turns into grief  in a blink of an eye, and grief becomes joy just as quickly. This world is not made for either to last long in, and it's no surprise that even our loves changes along with our luck" (3.2. 185-190). Joy turns to grief and grief turns into joy just as easily.

Justice

Justice, as defined by the dictionary, means something that has the quality of being just. That something, must be rightful and lawful. Even though most people know the dictionary’s definition of justice, many people believe that justice is similar to revenge or to becoming "fair" with another person. Justice requires a punishment when revenge comes into play. This means that to receive justice a compromise must take place.

Most compromises are brought to courts across the world. In every court case, there are two parties, the defendants party and the plaintiff party. Because there will always be two parties, how can justice be attained?

"An eye for an eye" is an older way to phrase justice. If you are a drunk driver and you paralyze a man that you hit while driving your car, although you may serve a few years in jail, how is it just to the person that you paralyzed? If the judicial system were to utilize the eye for an eye analogy of  justice, your punishment would be equal to the crime that you committed. The society that we live in, makes a smaller compromise of justice by sending people to jail for reduced periods of time. Often times, the compromise does not bring closure to the victim.

Human beings need closure; we crave the feeling that a person who has hurt us will feel the same way that we feel or have felt in the past. We have an emotional side to the things that have affected us, therefore, justice is a very difficult thing to attain. It is nearly impossible to make a perfect compromise with the right amount of punishment that will please two different people or two different groups of people.

Punishment is the driving factor behind why people avoid committing crimes. Punishment is necessary though when justice needs to be reached. On page 4 in the book The Republic, Plato describes that “When a man thinks himself to be near death and cares enter his mind that he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd quickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others.”

You cannot simply reach justice in any court case. You cannot undo what you have done. If you deal drugs and get caught, you will never reach a just standpoint from anything in the world because you cause an abrupt change in the way something or someone operates for each use of your drug. If you murder someone, you will never reach justice either because you will never be able to bring back the person that you killed. People forgive and forget, but you cannot undo an action that you have committed.