Week 8 - Integration One


The Human Condition

Root Belief 1: I believe that my purpose in life is derived from my experiences with others.
One of my favorite ways to describe our lives, that I heard from one of my youth

ministers, is that “we are a mosaic of all the people we have met and experiences we have had. I
enjoy this thought because it connects everyone together. It proves that we are not all individuals
on our own path, but rather highlights the impact that we can have on others and the impact that
they can have on us. The great thing about being human is that we can take all of our interactions
and experiences and pick and choose which ones we act on. We obviously experience way too
many things for them to all have an equal impact on our lives, but the fact that we have so many
puts an increased importance on the ones that we deem most important. We use these rankings
and experiences to guide us on our path through life.

A great example that highlights this form of ranking that we do to our experiences was
the week 6 “Where I Am From” poems. When I first read “Where I’m From '' by George Ella
Lyon - Moreau FYE Week Six, I thought that the assignment would be easy and I could breeze
through it. Once I started however I realized the depth and indecision in what I choose to put into
my own poem. I was forced to pick and choose what was most important to me. Breaking my
Poem down into three categories the things that are most important to me are: Family, Faith, and
Sports. It is amazing how simply I can tie these three main categories into what I want to do in
the future. My goal is to one day be an orthopedic surgeon. My family has shown me how
important it is to have strong people to lean on during injuries, unfortunately I have had a few
and am actually currently writing this while in the waiting room for knee surgery. Faith has
taught me to help others. Finally, I am a huge fan of sports and being able to help people get back
to playing them quickly after injuries can have a huge impact on their lives.

While my experiences growing up have affected what I want to do with my life, my
experiences with faith have affected how I want to live it. I strive to live my life through God and
for others. One of the best ways to try to live through God is by loving others and Because God
loves us, He wills our good. (“Faith brings light to a dark world” by Professor David Fagerberg -
Moreau FYE Week Three). In today's society, it can be so easy to get distracted and turned away
from God, whether that be hanging out with the wrong group of people, drugs or alcohol, or
desires such as greed or power. Nobody is perfect, we all have our flaws and that is even more of
a reason to follow God. I understand that I will never be perfect, but the conscious effort that I
put in to be more like him is what leads to real internal change. Additionally, by trying to live
through him I have found myself surrounded by great people at the Church of St. Pats back home
and at the University of Notre Dame.

Lastly, perhaps the concept that connects most with this belief of purpose derived from
experiences is the topic of implicit bias. We were fortunate to listen to “The Danger of a Single
Story” by Chimamanda Adichie - Moreau FYE Week Seven and get insight as to how our
exposure to ideas can affect the way we interpret massive societies and complex concepts.
Understanding this “Danger of a Single Story” can also illustrate the Power of being able to



experience so many things. Our implicit bias is most dangerous when we do not have a deep
enough understanding of an individual or idea and are forced to make assumptions, which as my
5th Grade teacher said, make an ASS of U and ME. However, when we have that exposure and
insight we are able to distinguish and analyze what we chose to act and base our goals in life on.

Root Belief 2: I believe that I grow through failure and vulnerability.
Throughout my life, two of the hardest things for me to deal with have been failure and

vulnerability. I was extremely fortunate to live in a great city, go to a great school, and perform at
a very high level in whatever I set my mind to. I found the physical side of my life growing
strongly but could tell my mental and emotional health was falling quickly behind. This
dichotomy between my physical and mental/emotional health reminded me of the video “Two
Notres Dames: Your Holy Cross Education” by Fr. Kevin Grove -Moreau FYE Week Five, and
how Notre Dame not only focuses on the cultivation of the Mind(physical) but also the
heart(mental/emotional). For that weeks QQC, I chose to ask the question: What personal
experience/story has had the greatest impact on your life? I decided, a bit ironically now
considering my current state, to talk about my first major injury that occurred during soccer
season. This was one of my first times in life where I was unable to do what I wanted and forced
me to focus on other areas of my life. If it was not for this injury, this form of failure that led to
finding new desires I would not be where I am today. Luckily for me I am very very happy with
where I ended up.

Secondly, in order to grow it is important to understand what our failures are and where
we can be vulnerable. The VIA Character Strengths survey -Moreau FYE Week Two was fun
because it allowed us to see which were our strongest character strengths but also which ones we
needed the most work on. I was not surprised that my weakest was humility considering that is
what I spend the majority of my time with my therapist talking about. I have always struggled
with pressure from family and friends to be the best at everything that I do, anything less than
perfect meant that “I didn't put in full effort” or “we know you can accomplish so much more”.
This led me to feel the need to be the absolute best at everything and prove that to others in
search of validation. I did not like the person I was turning into but found it difficult to be
vulnerable and reach out. The hardest thing about reaching out to people to talk to about it was
because the majority of my issues stemmed from my parents, and every time I tried to talk to
them about it they shut me down and said they didn’t do that. It wasn’t until a church retreat that
I opened up to some of my friends and youth ministers that I realized the true power of
vulnerability. They helped set me up with people to talk to and let me know that I could count on
them. These people turned into some of my best and closest friends and I was truly happy with
who I was when I was around them.

Root Belief 3: I believe that authenticity is crucial to forming life-long connections.
Finally, I will talk about authenticity and how I believe it is crucial to forming and

maintaining life-long connections and friendships. Similar to what I talked about regarding



vulnerability in my previous paragraph, vulnerability is also essential for authenticity. One of my
favorite quotes from the video “The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE
Week One, was “When you ask them about love, they tell you about heartbreak”. This quote
demonstrates how most of society today has become accustomed to flipping the narrative of a
question or conversation. Showing a form of authenticity but still holding back the answer to the
actual question that was asked. I feel like it is easy to be vulnerable with the things people do not
ask about because we know that is not what they are interested in; however, when they ask us
about something personal we shy away from true authenticity. Although we do not open up full
to everyone, to those that we do open up to, we form a much stronger bond.
Finally I will dive into a recent real life example on how true authenticity helped repair and
strengthen a lost friendship. I shared a little bit about this in the Moreau I’ve  FYE Week Four -
Searching for Life-Giving Relationships Comment section of my QQC but even since then there
have been updates in our friendship.  A quick summary of our relationship is that we were not on
the best of terms and it was affecting the friendships around us as well. It seemed as if we could
never have a productive conversation and resolve our issue. That is until literally last week when
he called me to apologize and acknowledge the mistakes he made and actions he wishes he could
take back. He told me that out of all our friends I was the one that was the hardest on him, but he
realized now that it was because I truly cared about him. He thanked me for my authenticity and
I did the same back to him. We both understood that without our honesty that we never would
have repaired this friendship that was so important to each of us.