The first essay

Paul Bradley

English 101

10-17-13

Learning My Conscious

The mind is a wonderful mysterious thing that has some parts of it that we may never find nor completely understand. But despite all the mystery behind the human psyche there are a few parts of it that we do understand why they are there and what they are used for. One such part is the human conscious, the little mind in the back of our heads that tells us right from wrong. I have had the amazing educational journey of finding out and learning how to use it. It starts in us all when we first begin to grasp what is good or bad, and we begin to better learn how to judge our actions better. Without my conscious I believe that I would be reduced to an inhuman animal only living off instincts there by turning myself into a monster. Needless to say I am happy that I have a conscience and that I have learned how to use it properly to shape me into the person I am today.   

When we are born we only have a base knowledge on what happens around us, it isn’t until later in life that we begin to understand the concept of right from wrong. For me this new found understanding would come in the shape of guilt. When I would do something bad I would feel guilty about it and wonder why I felt so bad for doing it. One such case would be when I called one of my fellow kindergarten mates a mean name, I knew that saying the word was wrong and should not be used but I decided that I would use it any way. It would take a few seconds for my little child mind to somewhat comprehend what I had done, but when it hit me that what I said was wrong and mean I immediately found my friend and apologized. After this event I sat down and felt a brief sense of satisfaction, like I had done something good. From this I would learn that certain feelings would come from the actions I chose, I could be the “Good Guy” and feel great about what I had done, or I could be the “Bad Guy” and feel bad and horrible about what I did. These feelings would teach me how to better choose what path or choice to take. This would be the start of how I would learn how to use my conscience it would also lead to me becoming what I am today. The feeling of feeling good will find its way into my mind more and more as I began to comprehend my actions as I got older, but as the feeling of satisfaction would continue to grow, so would the feeling of disappointment when I would do something bad. As time would go on more and more things about my conscience would become more and more clear to me, there would come the time when I would have to learn to choose from being right or wrong, when I would have to choose between being righteous or being cynical. One day this idea of choosing would come in the form of how I would spend my money for during Christmas time. I had just received my paycheck from the newspaper office and headed down to the store to buy things for presents, the problem was that I saw a new game that I caught my eye but knew I would not have enough money to buy it and get all the gifts that I wanted to get for my family. I was stuck between what I thought at the time to be a rock and a hard place. I could buy myself that video game and be happy, or I could buy all the presents I wanted to get my family. Looking back I took longer to make my decision than I would have preferred, the right choice being to buy gifts for my family, but the outcome was satisfactory. I decided it would be better for my whole family to be happy than just me, so I bought the gifts for the family. Needless to say when all was said and done I was happy with my decision, I still wanted that video game though.

As life would go on and on more and more choices like the ones that are presented would show up and I would deal with them as each one presented itself. Sometimes I would make the right choice, other times I would choose the obvious wrong choice and regret that I had been weak and chose to be wrong instead of being right. With all of these choices I would learn more and more about how to better use my conscience  and how learning to use it would help me learn who I really am, I am a nice guy who strives to make all of the right choices and at times can get blinded and frustrated with the choices I make. It is funny to think that learning something would come in the form of learning how to use something we can’t fully comprehend, but then again there are a lot of things we do not understand as human beings and that the few things that we do understand we learn how to better use them and the things that we learn shape who we turn into as people and dictate the actions and choices we take every day. And with those choices we shape the world into the world we live in. I am happy to have learned how to use my conscience and how I learned to dictate what is right and what is wrong, and at the end of the day I can go to sleep easy that through my life and what I have learned of my conscience I make good decisions and that I am a good person not a crazed inhuman evil animalistic being that works off of pure animal instinct alone.