1. All Strings Attached<br />Ashlyn Rye<br />Mr. Kabachia <br />November 5, 2009<br />Humanities 30-1<br />The picture of the puppet represents the illusion of free will and trying to peruse personal well-being but there is something that is unknowingly controlling you and manipulating you, making your decisions for you without you even knowing it. In the picture, the man controlling the puppet is blurred out; making it look like the puppet is controlling itself. The puppet can’t pursue its own well-being without free will and without him realizing that something is controlling him; you have to realize what it is doing to you. <br />Learning from my friend’s mistakes and my own mistakes has made me realize what I should and shouldn’t do and what helps and what doesn’t help. A couple of my best friends act as the puppets in their own lives and I feel like it is up to me help, they don’t realize what is controlling them and its drugs, alcohol and other peoples bad decisions. Before I entered grade eight I always led kind of a sheltered life, not knowing what people were doing and why they were making these bad decisions, until these people became my best friends. You don’t choose your friends, and I was thrust into this life and until you have seen the things I have I don’t expect many people to really understand what I go through and especially what my friend go through to make them do these things. I am not completely innocent, I admit recently, every weekend I sit back and don’t do anything about it anymore because I gave up on trying to help, until they can help themselves there isn’t anything I can do other then take care of them when they over do it. I still constantly sit them down and have talks with them, sometimes it gets through but other times their self conscious kicks in telling them that what I am saying isn’t going to make a difference. <br />Their well-being is harmed by the decisions of others and the influence it has over me and over their own personal choices. Right from the beginning the scenarios and events that happen to you shapes the type of person you are bound to become or to be around, unless you don’t let the external “being” control your decisions. I believe my friends have the strength and integrity to control their own lives if they stuck to becoming clean but the illusion of free will is what is throwing them off. I have watched them quit for a short time, then something happens that is to overwhelming and they are right back to where they started. I have observed that even though they think they are free to make their own decisions, they are really being controlled by each other’s decisions and the addiction of trying to escape from their problems and thinking to themselves without the drugs and alcohol to numb them, they would go crazy. It is like if you go to a party and you don’t plan on drinking or doing anything but as soon as it is offered to you or the idea is brought up, you can’t help yourself and you end up doing what you didn’t end up setting out to do in the first place. The idea, the thought, and the decisions of others doing what you’re not supposed to and peer pressuring you into what you know you shouldn’t be doing, these are all the things that are unknowingly controlling them. I can pin point this because I have been in that situation myself, I got out thankfully and now I can see what is happening to them from a third person perspective.<br />I personally have been very affected by this and what I see them put themselves through on a daily basis, without me there I strongly believe a couple of my friends came very close to overdosing and to even death. To me the puppet doesn’t really represent hope, because no matter what the puppet will always need those string to control him and he doesn’t realize it, it is the same with addicts. I think that a huge part of the reason my friends do these things to themselves is the way they were raised, never having any rules and always allowed to do what they wanted to, I never had that privilege so our point of view on things are vastly different. <br />In the end it is up to them to want to change, maybe there really isn’t anything controlling them but the decisions they and their friends make is like the guy controlling the puppet, the strings are attached and until someone realizes what they are doing to themselves and wants to change, the strings will always be attached. I think everyone wants to achieve person well-being and to have free will, but until you listen to what the little voice inside your head is telling you, you will continue to be controlled and not even know it. <br />