Most recently I have been reflecting on everything that has happened in my life. Since coming to college, I have learned a lot about myself. I have learned that the people I choose to be friends with are the people who show they care and understand that I am my own individual. I have learned that in a given situation, I listen to what people have to say about it and I tend to trust my gut more than what they say. I have learned that the people I have become friends with are very good people and I can see that they are becoming some of the people who are important to me. I found that I am starting to have a deeper connection to who I am, but I might not ever be fully connected. I have a lot to learn and I know that I will do my best. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “it is the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” The friends I still keep in touch with I can apply this quote to. The people I have become friends with now, I hope to one day be able to do that. I have also reflected on what I believe in. And I found that I believe in not knowing- and that would be not knowing where we will go when we die, not knowing what will happen next, not even knowing what might be happening in the present moment. I also believe in the interconnected web of all life. For me that means we are all threads that are moving in different directions. The people around us who we meet our thread makes a connection with that person’s thread and sometime those threads intertwine for a while and other times they hit and continue on their separate ways. While my belief in not knowing seems unconventional and may make people believe that I believe in being ignorant, but that is not the case.
-Rachel Dudley, Queen of the FeLions (from the planet Felion), Prisoner Fe26Li3O8N7
