District Assessment Spring 2011

Author’s Note: With this district assessment, I wrote about what I felt was the true meaning of this piece, as well as adding in some of what I personally thought to it as well.  As human beings, there are times when we encounter cross-road moments that ask for life altering decision, which is the topic I chose to focus on in this piece.  I felt that what I talked about truly makes the reader think, and that is what I was striving for.  Ultimately, I feel that taking chances is what we need to survive, and that is why I chose to write about that.  Thank you and enjoy!           

Humans are truly ineffable creatures.  Ever since our creation, we have evolved and shaped ourselves, as well as our surroundings.  Our minds have expanded, allowing for new characteristics and adaptations.  If one were to look at what our race once was, they would hardly recognize it, but even then, one thing remains constant to now—taking chances.  It was a chance to begin building fires, to go out and find food and wood, to begin to see the world.  It was a chance to allow those adaptations to take place.  We go into these moments head on, and never look back, and it is that foundation that has stuck with all of us.  Chances are what kept people going, what lead them to a change.  There are only so many chances in Life, and if we waste our time thinking about what could have been, we will never become part of what would have been.

Everyone deserves an opportunity to be content.  In the short story, The Hundredth Dove, Hugh was given a chance, one chance, to make something more of himself.  He could have become something more, but chose to let it slip away in order to please another.  All for the sake of someone who is no different, no better in the eyes of God.  In the Bible, when Gabriel came down to Mary and gave her a chance to create Jesus, to create hope, she accepted and never turned around.  By doing so, she created something that changed the world, because of the opportunity that Fate gave her.  When that dove came to Hugh, she offered him that moment, but rather than accepting it and shifting himself into something more, he killed it like it was an unwanted insect on the wall.  The dove was sacred, beautiful, and for it to be confused with something as profane as murder shows just what will happen if we cannot see that difference.      

Life carries no meaning if we are not willing to go after it.  If we don’t go after what we want, then we will always be standing in the exact same place.  It wasn’t the king that caused him to come across that white dove; it was a nudge by something much greater than coincidence to come across a new direction.   Hugh chased that white dove out of frustration for all that is wrong in his life, but never once stopped to think that it might mean something more.  Too often we charge through our day without a second glance at what is happening around us, and it is then that we miss the most crucial times.  The Lord did not thrust us into this earth to let things whisk away with the breeze; we are more valuable than that.  We all need a chance to change, and if that moment is presented, we need to take advantage of it.                        

The Truth of it is, it only takes something small to create something huge.  If there is no motive, then there is no purpose.  There is no turning back on a lost chance, no rewind button.  We drive ourselves away from our desires for fear that we will be rejected, shot down, and kicked to our knees, but that is the reason why we are still here.  Before time itself ever started, we pushed through those times.  We saw things in a new light, all because we were not afraid to try.  Hugh missed his opening, and turned himself into a distant memory, the shell of someone that never really was.  We need to take chances to survive, because if we don’t, we will pay the ultimate price.