Awakening to the Real World
Growing up as an only child, I had a tendency to believe that the entire world revolves around me. When it came to a birthday cake, anyone’s birthday in fact, I wanted the centre piece and I always got it, because I was the only child and in my mind I was the only important person in the world. Sharing a room with someone? Well that’s just not an option for someone who never had siblings. It wasn’t until I came to the United States, when I realized that in reality, an individual such as myself has to share this planet with over six billion other people. As the result of my awakening, I slowly began to understand that sometimes in life I had to make a compromise whether or not it pleased me.
My collage consists of two worlds, the one on the left represents the old, my fantasy world, which revolves around me; the one on the right is the real world, in which I began to realize that world has its own problems, such as war and poverty. One that can no longer only focus on my concerns. Nevertheless, living in a fantasy world I wasn’t completely unconscious of the real world. As you can see in the collage, the image of September 11 surrounded by toys and games, represents my innate awareness of the real world and its problems. I believe that if I never had that innate awareness of the real world, until this day I would have been living in a fantasy world. This innate awareness is like a spark without which it is nearly impossible to ignite the fire. Similarly in the real world, surrounded by all the problems such as bills, wars, protests and school I have a picture of sunset in paradise. This image represents the residual imaginary, paradise world I still believe I can have until this day. Even though today I have to work hard and I am completely conscious of most problems in our world, once in a blue moon I can take a vacation to paradise and devour myself into this paradise world, which is too, like the imaginary world is without any real problems.
From the time I was born, my appearance changed, my bones grew, I became taller, the color of your hair changed. However one thing that didn’t change since I was several months old is the color of my eyes. In my collage, I have an eye on the upper left side and on the lower right side. Even though they might look the same, the eye on the left is slightly smaller than the eye on the right. The only difference between these eyes is how they see the world as is illustrated in my collage. The younger eye (the eye on the left) perceives a fantasy world and the older eye (the one on the right) perceives the real world and is able to see everything from a different perspective. You can also note that pictures of when I was little surround the younger eye and most recent pictures of me surround the older eye.
In this Yin Yang collage, the two worlds come together. My old world which has the currency from my old country, Lats, and my new world which has a platinum credit card, which comes with responsibilities. SATs was the latest test that made me realize that the world doesn’t revolve around me, because there are so many brilliant people taking them in order to compete for the same thing I want. Every picture that is illustrated in my collage has some significance to my awakening, but ultimately they all lead to my realization that the world does not revolve around me.
December 18th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
I agree with your idea that single children usually believe that they are the center of the world. Well, not really because I’m a middle child, and growing up with such divided attention makes the whole 6 billion people in the world seem much less. Nonetheless, the concept of depicting the two worlds present in your life was a nice approach for your theme of awakening.