Respose to Baldwin

Baldwin makes the above statement in his essay, “The Fire Next Time.” By saying this he implies that unless you allow yourself to be influenced by your surroundings, you will never improve who you are. If someone else always is given responsibility for your actions, then you do not fully understand the consequences and can never grow as a person.

A person is guided through by life the experiences of his or her past and can only make judgments based upon those past actions if they know the outcome of those past actions. If one has never had to deal with the outcomes of personal actions because that person has always placed blame or responsibility on another individual, this person will not always make the correct, responsible decision. This can often lead to outcomes that this person will ultimately blame on another individual.

This often causes a lack of personal growth, which can result in an individual thinking that no matter what he or she does, it is never wrong and if the outcome was not what they expected, it was caused by the interference of someone else. This lack of personal growth is what Baldwin is re

We need to realize that the way that we look at our surroundings can influence the decisions we make. To make biased views of those around us is to make biased decisions about them. By looking past the outside appearances to the truth inside our surroundings, we see the role that the object, or person, plays in its environment. By ignoring the differences in appearance we would be able to remove the barriers that we place between ourselves and that which is different from us. By doing this, a person would have undergone a personal improvement that adds to the total growth of the individual. By viewing others as one would view oneself, a person can see past the stereotypes because of someone’s differences and realize that we are all fundamentally the same.

“If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring.“

ferring to when he states that they can “never grow up.” By not learning from life it as if they are experiencing each event for the first time, as a child would. By not accepting responsibility for their actions, they go through life as if always a child.

By taking responsibi

Some topics in this essay:
Fire Time”, , Baldwin- Baldwin, personal growth, responsibility actions, lack personal growth, taking responsibility, past actions, lack personal,