Life Role

For every role that is "performed" in one's life, the antithesis of that role also is performed. As I examine my many roles that I play in life, I realize that the majority of my time spent on this planet has been filled with learning. We all are eternal students, I guess you could say; this would at least be true in an ideal world. And for every individual whom consumes his or herself with being a student, that person also is a teacher. Too often the definition of teaching gets associated with a labeled person- a person with chalk-stained hands and a bright red apple upon a desk. I believe that teaching goes far beyond any one person who can stand in front of a classroom and program minds with information that will help pass standardized tests, information that will be vastly useless in the "real world".
More useful in our day-to-day reality are the lessons we take from regular people in our lives. Our parents are our first teachers and the ones that we probably obtain the most information from. Yet most of them do not have a degree in education. And those same parents will learn more from their children than they could have ever been taught in a classroom. The point here is that from the day we are born, we are students and teachers all at the same time. And these are the roles that I feel are most important to discuss as far as their application to my life.
It is difficult to pinpoint the social influences that molded my role. Rather than being shaped from a handful of individuals, I think it was affected more by a collaboration of everyone I have encountered throughout my life. Just as everyone, in their own little way, make an impression on one's life, so do they impact the role that we will continue to play throughout our lives. Obviously, though, some people are more important in this formation process. These people, of course, are our parents, schoolteachers, close friends, confidants, siblings, and anyone else whom we are relatively close