Inspired?
"All my life I had been looking for
something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.
I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction
and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and
asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could
answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my
expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been
born with: That I am nobody but myself.”
--Ralph Ellison, From Invisible Man
How do the Inspired Bicycles: Way Back Home
presentation and the Ralph Ellison quote relate to your world? Do they
provide you with a new perspective? How should we examine our lives? Who
are we? How shall we live? Should we follow our dreams? What are our
realizations? Can the presentation and quotation connect with your
academic endeavors? Did they make you look twice? Did they inspire and
motivate you? If you have seen one of these before, what is your new
reaction? Other reactions? Please connect and comment using complete
sentences. This blog post should be completed by Wednesday, September 6th,
2017 at 2:30p.m.
posted by Greg T at Friday, September 01, 2017
32 Comments:
I think the quote from Ralph Ellison very much relates to our society today and how we think of ourselves. Society is so influential both positively and negatively and that can play a huge role in what a person believes or thinks. Society can be very contradicting and can make someone change their thoughts to 'fit in' with everyone else. I think that a person should always think, believe, etc. what they want without having to change. We should be ourselves and follow our dreams without being doubtful or wanting to conform. However, society will always have an affect on people and that won't ever stop. So we all need to accept that, that people will believe something different, look different, and so on. Everyone is different and we should live that way, knowing that no one is the same but that it's okay.
Daniel MacAskill (The Trials rider in the video) is known worldwide for being one of the best trials (The form on Biking he was doing) riders in the world. He probably does trials biking because it is something he enjoys doing and he gets excited about it.He followed his own dreams and not other peoples. He ignored what other people said, that being a professional bike rider wasn't a good career. But he didn't listen, and did what he wanted. He followed his own beliefs and that is what the quote was essentially talking about before too.
The idea of being a transcendentalist is finding and being one thing and one thing only. Yourself. Transcendentalists try their hardest to not rely on people and civilization. They are true to no one except for themselves. Transcendentalists try to teach us that nature revolves around us, so we need to embrace it and use it to make ourselves better. This video showed me that there are amazing people in the world who can do amazing things. Motivation drives us to make the impossible possible. Both the quote and this video have a sense of individualism. They rely on themselves and they use their surroundings to make themselves better people
Recently someone gave me the most helpful advice I have ever received. The funny part is that I have heard this advice before but this time it just clicked. Do what makes you happy. Often it is harder to do say things rather than follow through with it as well. Tieing in the advice, recent events, and the transcendentalistic readings I have experienced lately. It has become clear to me that high school is such a small part of my life and there is so much coming in my future. I know it will be difficult but I am trying to live more simple. Spend time with people I like and who make me feel good and not just do the cool thing. I am trying to better my relationship with God and my family. I am learning that “the fear of missing out” might possibly be the dumbest thing ever. I need to focus on doing things that make me happy and support others in living their lives as it makes them happy. While I don’t completely believe in the whole transentalistic views I can see how nature can “reset” your mind and body. After doing a lot of thinking I know what I need to do, and I need to keep myself to it because if I can breakthrough this current life I am living I know I will open the doors to the basic joys of life (free of distraction).
The presentation and the quote relate to my world because they both make me think about how we live life by everyone else rules we keep ourselves in a box that society has created for us all. They give me a new perspective of why we should allow ourselves to be different and to take the path that best suits us, because that is the key to your best future. They can connect with my academic endeavors because it allows me to remember that even though school is thought to be something done in a specific way thats not always the truth. There are many different academic paths a person can take and still be successful. MY reaction to both of these pieces are that they are extremely inspiring and open eyes to a different way of life.
This quote relates to the real world because many people depend on others for there happiness. A lot of the time happiness can only be found within yourself. We should not examine our lives through other people. Rather we should look at it through our own eyes and figure it out ourselves. I was very inspired by this video because he is doing something that he loves too do and i think many people can learn from that. Just by not caring what people think about you, you can accomplish so much. He is very determined I respect that greatly.
This video really shows how we just need to improve the things in life that we are good at. Even if we are physically or mentally not skilled, there is still something we are good at. The quote relates to this video because the video is really just doing what you enjoy and practicing it. We need to find what we are passionate about and do the things we love.
The quote relates to the world because many people rely on others to make them happy and to make decisions. Many people think that they need other people to make them happy but really happiness is within yourself. Others cannot be making decisions for you, that takes away from you and in the end will make you less happy. People should go with their gut and instinct, you should live your life how you want to live it. The quote says, "I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself" in order to do what you want in life you must listen to yourself not others. You are never going to please everyone so you might as well work on pleasing yourself.
The video and quote relate to world and society because both the world and society are constantly changing. Which shows that you can do and be who you and makes you happy. In the video it shows a biker biking all over, this shows that he is doing what makes him happy. The quote also talks about living life to the fullest and not caring what others have to say about you. And in today's society I feel less and less people care about what others are saying about them. We are seeing many more people being themselves, and that is why I think both the quote and video relate to society today.
The video and quote relate to the real world because people believe what they are told. If you're an athlete and doing what you love people will probably tell you that you aren't good enough and you won't make it in that, but if truly believe that you can and you put in the time and work it requires you can do whatever you want to.
Inspired Bicycles conveys how in order to get to such skills you need to work at it. No one can give you credit for your own passions or talents. In relation to this, the Ralph Ellison quote examines how the self needs to be awakened inside in order to achieve your greatest potential. We should follow our dreams because our dreams are what drives us through the rough aspects of life. If we do not follow our dreams we are forgetting the value of happiness. Academically, the only person responsible for your grades are you. Many people will bring you down by putting thoughts in your mind to forget the value on our own autonomy.
Everyone is unique in their own way. Just because you do not conform to the typical normalities of society does not meant that you are useless or an insignificant purpose. Every individual brings a new light to the world. We are meant to follow our dreams and passions, whether that be different or similar to those of our peers. In essence, happiness and bliss is the most important component to someone's life. Without following your dreams and doing what you love, you are losing time that you could be doing something which makes you happy.
When watching “Inspired Bicycles: Way Back Home,” the video tries to inspire us to work hard, and when you do, you get a reward along with it. I think the video is trying to show us that with dedication you can accomplish more than you think. While watching the video, all of his stunts look crazy and hard, but since he was passionate about what he does, he was able to become an expert at it. I bet when he was younger, he had a dream to become an extreme bicyclist. He followed that dream, and now he is here. I think we don’t realize how much we can actually do, if we just were to put our minds to it.
The quote and video makes you look at your life differently, no matter what happens your life is only your own. There are ups and down but you have to endure through the downs in order to get to the ups. You have to find the thing that makes you happy and that will provide more ups and more opportunities to be happy. Don’t expect to be good at everything because that will only make it harder to progress your abilities in one thing. You should look at others accomplishments as inspiration and not as a situation to put yourself down and say “I can’t do that” because yes you may not be able to do that but there are certainly things that you can do that others can’t and you have to be proud of those things.
The Ellison quote resonates with me personally. Up until very recently I had no real sense of myself as an individual and would go along with whatever the masses were doing. While I don’t see anything wrong with following trends, it never really felt like me. Ellison’s quote and the video both offer the idea that you should live life to how you see the fullest. The video shows that you should utilize your talents, and the quote states that you need to live and develop your life around yourself and not others. When you combine these, the two examples deliver the lesson that you should live life on your own terms, doing what you love and loving what you do.
The presentation and quote relates to my world, because it makes me feel stronger as an individual. It allows me to gain perspective about life by accepting myself how I am. We should examine our lives in a way that doesn't make us want to change how we are. We shall live as though it's our last day. In order to live life fully we must accept ourselves and thrive through everything we do. In our academic endeavours we have to push through with everything we willingly have to offer. This presentation and quote did make me think twice about how we allow others to define who one is as a person. We have to let them go and do your own thing. It inspired and motivated me to live big and not let others control my life.
After watching the video and reading this quote, I feel like it is important for me to find something that I love to do and find out how I can give inspiration to others to do the same with my their talents. It also shows us that we should strive to try to be just us, and that by doing so we will be able to inspire others with the talents we find in ourselves.
The motivation of self is something that no one else can give you. Your motivation comes from your own experiences and your own life. Motivation can come from inspiration, however they aren’t the same. Inspiration leads to motivation, however motivation can’t just come from inspiration. The Inspiration can come from different people but only true motivation can come from yourself. Watching someone be good at something can lead to people getting motivated to learn things like how to ride a bike, ski, or even learn a language. After watching the Inspired Bicycles video I found myself remembering a video I watched a couple years ago by the same guy, he had biked on the rooftops of spain in a video posted by red bull, this gave me some amount of inspiration when I first saw it, this let me motivate myself to try something new, riding a bike recreationally, this allowed me some time to think, exercise, and funnily enough feel more energized, with the inclusion of a 18 mile bike ride daily I felt less tired and cut loose a little. Even though I took inspiration from another, the motivation came from personal experience, when I had fun I decided to do it again, each time working towards farther and farther distances, until winter came, at which point I was forced to drop my new found hobby. This break caused a rift, I want to get back to biking, but I also have to work in order to be able to afford college, lunch, or gas for my car. Motivation is caused by personal experience, and can be a result of other’s achievements.
After reading the quote and watching the video, I think that these were meant to inspire people to be themselves. By being ourselves instead of what others want us to be, we can find talents that we didn't know we had, which we can use to inspire even more people. Academically, this can help us to increase our self confidence, which eventually leads to better grades and overall success. Overall, I think that these two men want to inspire others to find their true potential
I feel like I can easily relate to the Inspired Bicycles: Way Back Home presentation and the Ralph Ellison quote. In Ralph Ellison’s quote, he is talking about looking for his identity and trying to find it by asking other people and I definitely feel like I am doing that right now in high school. Now after reading this it made me realize that I sometimes look to other people for approval and/or to show me what is right and wrong. I always ask other people their opinions, which I think are important at times, but no one can tell you who you are supposed to be. This quote inspired to have more confidence in myself, just like the biking video did. In the Inspired Bicycles: Way Back Home presentation I thought it was pretty cool to see this guy doing these near impossible tricks on a bike that I could barely do with just my feet. To be honest I was a little confused why we were watching this at first but then I started to think about it, the fact that he does these “impossible” tricks on his bike just proves that you can do anything that you set your mind to. It kind of reminded me of the experience I had the other day; I was looking at some old pictures and videos on my computer and I found some of when I used to do gymnastics. In one of the videos I did like a back flip and back handspring on the beam and I thought of how crazy it was that I used to be able to do that (I definitely could not do that now). And then I realized that it really is all a mind game. I was determined to succeed and learn new tricks on the beam and I did, it was as simple as that.
Both the video and the quote advise having independence when making decisions. This idea is practical to most people’s lives, as I think we all allow other people to make decisions for us too often. Questions which I should answer by myself should rely mostly on my input. However, we shouldn’t discredit the advice of others; it helps us to make wise decisions. These presentations do motivate me somewhat to rely on my own determinations more often. I realized that the author is correct, we are ourselves and only ourselves. It would be smart to stop trying to be other people.
After watching the video and reading the quote I believe that people should do what makes them happy. There is so much pressure put on kids to succeed, and be in honors classes, and get good grades, and become rich. But if all of this is making you miserable then it shouldn’t be done.The bicyclist video and quote really shows that we should decide how our life plays out not our parents or anyone else. We should follow our dreams and make things happen despite what other people think. I can connect because my parents have always suggested that I should go into finance and engineering, both which could be interesting but are not choices I probably would’ve made on my own. I should be the one deciding what to do with my life, I should be listening to myself before letting others influence the way I live. So should everyone else.
After viewing, Inspired Bicycles:Way Back Home, it was very inspiring to see how a young man, who did not know how to ride a bike when he was young, to becoming one of the greatest skilled cyclist. I think the memo of the video was that no one was born to be amazing, we have to push ourselves physically and mentally to achieve what we want in life. We should never give up on our dreams, no matter how difficult or impossible it might be. Overall, if we set our minds to it we can do anything.
I don't really find things like that video inspiring. There is no tangible or inspiring connection between someone of great talent and their craft, because it is somewhat hard to look at the master of some strange thing, and correlate that to something that I happen to be talented in. It is far more gratifying to see everyday people who happen to be exceptionally skilled.
This video and quote inspired me to look at my world in a different perspective. In the world today, we deposit so much pressure on the ability to be successful. I believe that success is fluid and success can be determined differently by everyone. By putting pressure on being successful in every field, we aren't allowing ourselves to put time and effort into something we are truly interested in. In the video you can clearly see that this man has put years into his ability to ride his bicycle that way. With acquiring a new skill comes failure and within failure you find determination to persevere. In the quote, Ellison explains how he allowed people to determine what he was because he simply wasn't socially or self aware yet. Although he allowed others to determine what he was, he states that he is what he is, implying that no matter what others will say or do to influence him, he will always have a sense of his true identity. I think a major point to take from these videos is that everyone succeeds and experiences different things, which allows us to be different. Being different and having different skill sets than others should not be perceived as negative, but as a positive, as it helps us grow and build off each other.
To make us happy, we need to stay true to ourselves. If doing bike tricks makes you happy, doit. As Ellison says in “The Invisible Man”, we are nobody but ourselves. We all have different needs and wants, and we all have different things that make us happy. If we try and be like the rest of society, the individual fades out, along with creativity. It’s the individual that drives humanity forward, and the individual that makes humanity what it is today.
I feel that the video was only inspiring to a very select group of people: those who are interested in bikes and bike tricks. However, the quote can be inspiring to most people passionate enough about something to get better at it. Sometimes, the only one who can answer your questions is yourself, and sometimes you just need to be yourself. The video does not convey this message, however, because it only focuses on the skill of the rider. We do not know the person in the video as anything other than "the bike trick guy," so we are not as impressed or inspired by his skill. When you are only shown the successes of a person, it is hard to believe that they have any struggle or put any time into training, because we are only familiar with their "effortless" stunts.
This video really inspired me because I had found out that they guy wasn't able to ride a bike before he had made that video, and now his like a pro. I can also connect to this because in my own experience, I see have seen kids that could not swim when I was teaching them lessons. After 3 months they are so much better and feel proud of themselves. This video is an inspirational video with a powerful message. I believe the message is if you want something then you have to practice and you will get better.
This quote really provided me with a new perspective on life. This quote shows that we should look at ourselves and figure out write and wrong and what makes sense to us so that we can become a better version of oursleves.
The Ralph Ellison quote and the video gave me more inspiration towards being myself, and caring less about what others want me to be and what others want me to do. I'm sure people told Danny MacAskill in the bike video he would have to go to school, get a degree, and find a good job if he wanted to be successful. But clearly, he has found his passion, biking, and has become very skillful at it; to the point where he has gone professional and makes a lot of money biking. We all should follow our dreams and do what makes us happy, although it may be smart to have a back up plan, because many of us cannot go professional and make money doing what they love.
The quote does not really inspire me to do much I am inspire to do what I am already and I know I am on the right path. I already have a career in my passion and I will have that outside of college to.
After watching "Inspired Bicycles: Way Back Home," I started to think about how cool it is that at one point, all of us were't even able to walk. And now we're all able to do things beyond what we thought we could. I think the point of the video is to show that once you find your passion go out and get after it. Also, as a runner and a swimmer, I know how much work goes into perfecting something. During swim season I was one tenth of a second away from making A -League and lettering in the sport but I couldn't get my start off the block. Since then, I've practiced my start over a hundred times. So far I haven't had a chance to compete and see the results but I know all the hard work will pay off just like it does with anything.
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