Last Exploration - Emily Shearer

Part One: Right from the first page, The Idea of a Local Economy got me thinking slightly off the topic of its original points. Berry spoke about local economies, but it got me thinking about the world as a whole. He said, "we can't hope to solve these problems without an increase of public awareness and concern." From that, I started thinking about how much I hear on a day-to-day basis about the economy, global warming, and just our environment in general. It seems to me that the awareness is one half and the concern is the other half of what we need to solve problems. I see the awareness being pushed out upon people, but seeing concern is not as occurring. I am guilty of hearing about something that is meant to be important and then not really thinking twice about it, but I think that more people need to be in touch with the way the world is today. Berry goes on to say, "Our methodologies of land use have strayed from our old sympathetic attempts to imitate natural processes..." Today's world is extremely, if not almost entirely, based on the new findings in all sorts of technology, and becoming less and less so to do with nature. We are now becoming less grateful, less knowledgeable about our surroundings, and less skillful in the aspects of the natural world, as Berry stated. It really switched a light bulb in me to really want to get out from behind all the technology that we are all blessed to have in this world and get my hands dirty. I want to do things like going outside and gardening with my grandma like I did growing up, and be more involved with nature in general.

Part Two: An important issue that is often undermined is success. The topic of success is broad, but I want to talk about what makes someone successful. Someone who busks on the streets every weekend just to make a little extra cash may consider themselves to be just as successful as someone who owns their own business and can afford to live a luxurious life. Success is not counted by fortune or fame, as some may think. During my senior year of high school, my English teacher gave the class an assignment to write about three different successful people. Many spoke about athletes, movie stars, and singers. In general, they wrote about people that everybody would know, and based their popularity as success. I chose to write about people that I know personally, and explained how I thought they were successful. As a result of using the three people I did, I was told to completely start over. I was infuriated because of the time I spent on that project. The only reason I was being told to re-write it was because my teacher thought that the people I chose were not successful merely for the reason that he didn't know who they were. Success, like I said before, is not supposed to be about the number of figures you make or how many materials you own or how known you may be, and I see so often that people do not pursue what they actually want to in life just because of the fear of "not being successful." In reality, one's success relies on themselves as an individual and not the opinions of others.