Individuals and their views

During my first months in the United States, people told me many things about how to survive in this country. It was as if every one knew that the common denominator of success in this country is what we as individuals can do. As the months went by the emphasis on the belief that individuals can succeed without the help of others became engraved me and reinforce with what I saw in every day. For many years I believe succeeding in this country would depend only in what I could do as individual.

Moreover, I lived my life as many other Americans, thinking that other people had nothing to do with my success, for instances, at my arrival to this cosmopolitan city, New York, I refused to understand what my friends meant every time they told me, if you learn English, you’ll be able to get a better job. At those moments I used to think that learning the language was not necessary, perhaps because getting a job that doesn’t require you to speak English in a grocery store or in a restaurant and allow you to make the necessary money to survive as an immigrant, made it look as if those commends had no meaning whatsoever.

In fact, what my friends emphasized was that during our lives we always need the help of others, that people will always help us directly or indirectly and that no one can rich their goals by their own. None of these things made sense to me back then, but after taking an Introduction to Sociology class in college, what my friends tried to explain to me started to make sense. Through my class, I learned how external factors can influence an individual behavior, how social classes determined how successful an individual can be. Furthermore, from the formation of the first civilizations individuals have always done everything in groups.

Overall, if we analyzed ours lives, most of us will realize that our families and friends have been always present in our lives and that through their advice we had make the most difficult decision of our lives. In fact we will also realize that every time we have to make a decision, we do it thinking in what is the best for us, of course, after we consulted it with our closest friends and family. Indeed none of these will become clear to us because our centralized way of thinking and our narrow view of the world only allow us to believe that what satisfy us is right and that what makes us feel uncomfortable is wrong so may be when we can break these fictional walls, we can turn around an d say thank you to all those that have influenced our lives.