How Do We become What We Are Today?

Every move we take, every choice we make, it all makes a difference good or bad. Jesus Colon was at the subway station very late one night right before he made a decision that changed the way he thought about things.

Jesus Colon walked aboard a train one night. It was late. A woman with two little children a baby and a suitcase in her hand was also on the train. When it got close to Colon's stop he saw the woman with the two children, a baby and a suitcase get ready to get off. he asked himself, do I help her? he wondered what would she think? what would a black, Puerto Rican man past midnight approaching a white lady look like? would she say yes? he was to worried of what she would think so he walked straight past. This connects to 'No Man is an Island' by John Donne because in Donne's poem the line 'No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main' relates to Colon's story because he felt different and ashamed of his differences, he felt like an island, though really he is a part of the continent because he realized he did the wrong thing and he will never do it again. Colon's story for me relates to everyday things like just smiling in to hallway to someone can really make a difference.

Colon still to this day regrets the choice he made in the subway station and said that he would never not help someone again no matter what the response might be because at least you tried.

No Man Is An Island

No Man is an Island

By John Donne

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

I think that both the visual poem created by Jason van Genderen and the written poem by John Donne above have the same message. The message being no man deserves to be alone or forgotten, each man is part of the world and there loss or suffering will make us weaker as a whole. Fatmire Feka's speech

Donne's poem really expresses the interconnection between everyone and how one loss or bad thought makes everyone weaker. The line ' any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind' really shows how when one man dies or one man suffers even if you don't know who they are it is horrible to know that you have so much and they suffer.

Van Genderen's visual poem's message is to help others because if you just sit back and watch you will get weaker. In the video there are little clips of homeless people in Sydney and New York and that to me really expresses the message many people go without while other have everything they want. Life may be unfair but no one should ever have to suffer.