Response to Karen's Post: My Tintern Abbey

After reading this post I realized that Karen's story was similar to one of my own. Though I have never read the poem Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth, I can relate to it as if I were him. I tried remembering a place that I had the most attachment to, and calmed me down, and I could only come up with one. The pond in my backyard was the only place that I felt the most connection to. There were other places that I could have chosen, but the pond felt to be most peaceful place to be.
I remember when I moved into from my old house to the new one that I now am living. I went to the back yard to check it out, because as a kid you want a big backyard to play a lot of games. As I was wondering through the back yard I discovered a small pond that was located at the far corner in the back yard. I remembered that it was very slimy and mossy all around the edges of the pond. But in the middle of the pond was this clean surface, as if it were never touched by any outside debris. It looked so peaceful and untainted in the middle, and I would glance at it and see the reflection of the clouds in the sky.
At the time I was with my twin brother, and if no one else could tell we were pretty much complete opposites. I was always the calm one who didn’t cry all the time and I didn’t really care what was going. My brother on the other hand was very loud, annoying and simply too much to handle. He was also with me in the backyard when I discovered the pond. He did not take in the majestic scenery that I saw, so instead, he picked up a rock and launched into the middle of the water. As the rock was airborne, I felt a sense of displeasure. When it broke the surface of the water and clunked right the middle of the pond I was not at peace. I lost my temper and I ran to my brother and yelled at him for doing that as well as push him away from the pond.
During the next few years, the pond seemed to take on a different look. It was getting smaller and smaller. I remember trying to fill up the pond by running a hose from the side of the house to the pond, but of course, I did not realize that the hose was not long enough to reach the pond. I felt like I have failed to save this pond, but my father was looking from outside of the window and saw my failed attempt to save the pond. I felt helpless to save the pond as it became a small puddle, and eventually dried out. I was not the same as I was before; I was always tense and uneasy.
One day I saw my father at the same spot where the pond used to be and he was carrying a shovel in one hand and I did not understand what he was doing, but he said it was a surprise. For weeks I did not want to know what he was doing, until he calls me over o the spot where the pond was. I could not believe my eyes, right there, in front of me was a pond, just like the one I saw years before. I did not know the feeling that I had, but I felt like I was completed. I felt so much at peace to stare at the middle of the pond, still untouched and quiet. Years would pass and the pond still looks the same as we left it. I still remember myself, a few weeks before college started, I was in front of the pond gazing at the mysterious beauty, I noticed that I saw life beginning to stir up. I looked closer, and I saw tadpoles, and fish in the water. I thought to myself that this was an amazing gift that this pond has brought me and I can still remember it till this very day. One day, when I live in my own house, I am going to build a pond in remembrance to the one that I have been growing up with as a child.

Just last week I was watching a show called The Colony. as i was watching this, i was wondering how a group of completely different people from completely different backgrounds are able to live in an post-apocalyptic event. they were tested on both their survival skills, and their ability to communicate with each other to live a maintainable life as a "Colony". i connected each of the characters in the show to the the stereotypes that i had read in an article called "Living The Image" by Andrew P. Smiler. He mentions different type of stereotypes and their behaviors. i was able to connect most of these stereotypes with the cast  in the show. i found it quite fascinating how we are in  a world of different people, yet we depend on everyone to contribute to each others survival. even on a small scale, people ranging from different social status' like from models to doctors, contractors to soldiers. i felt that i could connect with these people, as well as the stereotypes that Smiler notes in his article. its also shows us how ignorant we are of others, until a situation like this one shows us the reality of how much we need and rely on each other for survival. we are not lone wolves. we are a team. I also related this to other natural disasters that have been around for the past few years, and i notice that we the people only help each other when its too late, we wait until the action happens, then we try to find a reaction to fix it. we do not try to predict the action, simply because we cannot determine the future. all we can do is just to prepare ourselves for the future and hope that everything would go the right way. the Colony showed me that we all have the potential to live a better and more organized lifestyle, other than taking things for granted. Nugent mentions that we rely too much on our future that we do not try to acknowledge what the world is today.