Wednesday, March 4, 2009

You Can Make the Best out of the Worst Situation (Post #3)

In class when we were discussing our quotes from chapters 13-15, I thought of Malcolm's rough life and how he completely transformed his ways of living along with his attitude towards others. Malcolm has showed us that you can make the best out of the worst situation. For Malcolm to be a criminal in prison and to then completely turn his life around by educating himself and turning to the religion of Islam, is truly a great accomplishment. 
Malcolm reminds me of my other grandpa (not the one that was in the Holocaust). My Grandpa Alex had a really hard life growing up during the time of the depression. He was a child of 7 living in the tenements of the Bronx. His parents were both immigrants from Hungary and they could barely make ends meet. Every paycheck barely kept him and his family alive. My grandpa never had a decent education, and he was kicked out of high-school. In the time of the depression, it was very hard to get a job, especially for my grandpa since he had no education whatsoever past high school. My grandpa could have easily decided to give up on life and just become a painter, or carpenter, or somebody of a low paid job during that time; but instead my grandpa decided to turn his life around. My grandpa educated himself by reading books on history, literature, poetry, and many other things. He self-educated himself to the point where he could get a well-payed job and become independent. And that's just what he did. 
My Grandpa Alex went on to become a successful owner of his own Insurance Company.
At first he started out as an insurance agent, and he later on furthered his success by studying very hard to 
become the owner and founder of Health Insurance Network. From his success he became very wealthy. Today, he
is still the owner and now has had a great life because of his will to keep going and not give up. From being kicked 
out of high-school during one of the world's greatest depressions, and being an extremely poor person, my Grandpa Alex
did not give up and completely changed his life for the better. He definitely turned a bad situation into a great one.
Below is an article that shares a story of a woman Jen, who became very ill. Doctors said she was going to die, and that it was probably better off that way. The doctors kept fighting, and they saved Jen. Although they had to amputate both of her hands and legs, Jen considers herself very lucky. Instead of sitting around and accepting defeat, she got right back up and started performing normal activities. She has started driving, has learned to type, and is going back to work. I think that anyone else would just say 'look at what's happened to me, I'm not going to go anywhere in life or really do anything with myself'. Jen showed that even though she was stuck in a really rotten situation, she was still going to live her life and not let it keep her down. (Also, I thought it was so cool that in order to help support her, her family rallied around her at the hospital and on www.getwelljen.blogspot.com!!!): www.playfoundation.net/pdf/article.pdf. Lastly, here is another website that tells you how to make the best out of a really bad situation. It gives helpful tips on how to stay positive and how to move on: http://ezinearticles.com/?Positive-Attitude---Making-the-Best-out-of-the-Worst&id=569007

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