Reflection Piece

11/27/2025

In my time here in Paraguay, I have not had much time to watch movies, and at least in training, I have not had too much time for self-reflection. However, in my last few days with my host family in Capiata, where I did my training, I got to watch some good movies, thanks to the superb movie selection of Paraguayan Netflix. I watched Scent of a Women, Dead Poets Society, and Hitch, which the final I watched with my host brother. The rest of this piece is relating the themes of Dead Poets Society to my service, so if you haven’t watched the movie and don’t want spoilers, feel free to skip. After watching Dead Poets Society, I have been left thinking about the line between life and death, as well as freedom and compliance. Neil has his first moment of freedom when he is able to act in the play. Using the metaphor of Plato’s cave, this is the first time in his life that he has escaped the cave and seen what his life can be like when he is allowed to live freely. However, when his father takes this away from him, he feels that he can no longer return to his old life, the way it was before, because it was once his typical life is now a life of torture, as he cannot bear to live anymore without the newfound freedom he knows is possible and tangible. This also reminds me of a quote that I read in a book this summer named, “ After The Ecstasy the Laundry” by Jack Kornfield. He says that he encountered a spiritual leader once that was actually discouraging his students from starting their path to enlightenment. He said that once one begins this path, there is no turning back, as it will clearly outshine any other lesser purpose. A life of freedom, a life, reaching towards true spiritual enlightenment is the most difficult and rewarding life. One cannot simply go back to a life of thoughtless conformity once they are able to imagine themselves outside of the grips of society, truly free. The movie, Dead Poet Society, does a wonderful job showing both the wonders and the tragedies of free thinking in youth. On a positive side, all of the kids that are part of the club begin to explore their passions and their hobbies, and come into their own. However, they begin to get into trouble, for instance when Knox makes overly bold moves with his crush, or when Charlie mocks the headmaster in front of the whole school. While they have the intention of finding themselves and being free, they become too empowered by the words of their new teacher. Furthermore, Neil makes the tragic decision to commit suicide when his father informed him that he will be going to military school and then medical school, essentially setting the fate of the next 10 years of his life, and banning him from doing any more acting. In this moment, Neil has seen the light after his first play, and cannot bear living without it. To use the analogy from Kornfield’s book, Neil has seen the ecstasy, and would rather die than do laundry for the next 10 years of his life. The scene after his death shows all of the students robotically reading religious verse in a ceremony for Neil at the school. To me this shows the conformity of the students for the sake of keeping their minds narrowed. While we all value freedom, especially in America, it also leads to the most painful feelings as well. I don’t think Neil would’ve been happy with his life if he continued on the path he was going on before meeting Keating, but he probably wouldn’t have killed himself, at least that early in his life. We only realize the cages that we live in until we are taken out of them. Thus, the ultimate torture is to show a cages animal what freedom really looks like, and then force it back into its cage to live the rest of it’s miserable life with the added knowledge that there’s so much more that their life could be. This is why Kornfield says that one should not begin their spiritual journey if they have no intention of pursuing it for their whole life. I really like how this movie shows both the magic and the danger that freedom gives us, and also about the responsibility that lies on the teacher that gives kids their first opportunities to think for themselves.

While watching the movie, I began to think about my own life, but also how I can hopefully be as inspiring as Keating to the kids I will be teaching in Paraguay. I am imagining myself both as one of the children in the class, but also as the teacher, and I will soon be in a position to be inspiring children, living in a similarly authoritarian and non-creative learning environment. Due to the recent departure from dictatorships as well as a strong collectivist mindset, Paraguay’s youth do not demonstrate the same creativity and individual thinking that I have seen in American schools. It is a goal of mine to inspire new types of thinking in students here, however, I am also acutely aware of the responsibility that I have to ensure that I am doing this in a healthy way after watching this movie. I am only here for two years, and giving these kids freedom just to leave and maybe have nobody to follow up with them could do more harm than good. However, I’d like to think that planting the seed of free thinking, and dreaming big can ultimately inspire some of the kids I teach to diverge from their pre-selected path.

However, like I said before, I still am just a kid, still trying to figure out how much or little I want to conform, and I’ve had moments in my life where I can see just how bright the light of total freedom shines. These have been the most meaningful moments of my life, however I’ve spent a lot of time grieving over the duller moments in between. While I have said I am here to teach, I am really here to learn. I have been learning new languages, customs, ways of life, and ways of thought.

I will be departing for my new site in 5 days, and this will bring the most amount of freedom I’ve ever had in my life. This is what I came to the Peace Corps for, an escape from the conformity to a traditional path. However, even during my training period, I have already seen the difficulties that this freedom will bring about. My emotions during the last few weeks have been like a rollercoaster. From learning where I’ll be going for the next two years, having to say goodbye to a family that I’ve already grown close to, and also saying goodbye to friends that I’ve already become accustomed to spending a lot of time with, it has not always been happy days here. For the first time in my life, when I arrive at my site, there will be nobody telling me what to do, and my days will be entirely decided by what I decide to do. If I wanna do an English club, that’s great, but I have to take the initiative to work with staff and to gather students and to make lesson plans, and adapt in real time when my plans fall through.

I will be the only American within 40 km of my town, so while it has been difficult at times to be here in Paraguay away from home, I have leaned a lot on my fellow peers who I get to see everyday. Arriving at my site will be a true jump into the deep end of immersion, where I will be having to build habits and make friends without the steady support of my peers that I have grown accustomed to.

To go back to how I started this, freedom shares a line between life and death. A life of freedom is the ultimate life, however a life deprived of freedom can lead one wanting death. I know that there will be hard days, really hard days ahead, because I have already had hard days here in Paraguay, and before I arrived here. Additionally, I signed up to do something that would push me outside of my comfort zone, so with this should be expected hard days. These are the days where patience will become a virtue. In striving for a life of freedom, one must also have great patience. This is because there’s times when your life takes time to catch up to your thoughts. In Neil’s case, his thoughts were ahead and freedom and being an actor, but his life lagged behind, still under the bearing foot of his father. With more patience, he could’ve kept on, complied as much as he needed to before he could scurry out of his cage. In a way, I feel like I’ve done the same. By the time I reached college, I really started to despise school, yet I knew that there was a reward to be had from conforming just enough. This reward was a degree that ultimately gives me more freedom than if I decided not to continue with school.

I must acknowledge the blessing and the curse of the freedom I have in my life. On the days where the path I’m forging is a light with foliage, and full of beautiful views, I feel like I’m riding on top of the world. However, other days, when the path I’m working on is full of vegetation, and my boots are sinking in the mud, while the others on the predefined paths are sailing along at a constant speed, I question why I am making my life more difficult than it needs to be. I take great inspiration from Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha. Like Siddhartha, I too hope to forge my own path, going where life takes me, enjoying the good, and learning from the bad. My goal is to live many lives in one, and I know with this will come one part misery and one part joy. A life of conformity puts a limit on emotion and existential thought. When a bird is not allowed to wander too far from the nest, it avoids both life’s greatest treasures, and also life’s greatest dangers. I am a little bird, and I have taken the calculated decision to expose myself to some of life’s more painful experiences, in the hopes that I also get to experience joy and happiness in a way I could never do if I stayed closer to the nest.

Ironically, I feel closer than ever to lots of friends and family from home. In times of greater need here, I have found that my vulnerability has opened the door to many more real conversations with friends and family. While it is always nice to chat and catch up, I truly feel alive when I am talking to somebody and we are getting deeper than just catching up. And since being here I have had plenty of conversations that have gotten to the depths of purpose in meaning of life in the universe. While I would love for this blog to read like a newsletter, I quickly realized that I would run out of steam very fast if my intention with this blog was to catch people up with my day-to-day life. I have a little passion for writing about these sorts of things. Instead, I prefer to attempt to capture the complexities of my emotions in my life into words, both for my own benefit, and hopefully the benefit of those of you reading this as well. I salute you all before I begin my descent into the unknown.