Every so often, if you're in therapy, you get asked, what does a life worth living look like? What steps can we take to make that life happen for you. For a while, I never had an answer to this question because I didn't see life as something worth enduring. Even though I have an answer now, sometimes that future gets blurred in my head and I lose sight of the path towards it. When I look to the future and try to picture that life worth living, the state of the world makes this future seem less and less attainable. My future is safety from gun violence, safety from violence against minorities, safety for women, universal health care, protecting and helping the homeless and those in poverty, increased protection of LGBTQ. Financial security, better mental health care and research. My future has peace and our peace, peace in communities, peace all over the world. Just peace. All around me, I see people of my generation who feel the same way, uneasy about our futures, eager to make changes and become more involved, protesting, marching, spreading information all over social media, contacting government officials, studying political science so they can be the people who make the changes. To be honest, sometimes doing those things doesn't seem like enough. I know that I have a voice and I've seen people like me all over use their voices. Yet using my voice, our voices, doesn't matter when the people we're shouting to choose to ignore us. Our voices matter when our voices are heard, and the people with the power constantly choose not to listen. They hear us yelling, but they don't truly listen to the words. This is why more of us are going into politics so we can be the power too. As for me personally, what can I do? What do I do? What steps can I take to make this future possible? The one thing I do best, photography, storytelling. Keep using my voice and my art to show the world, the beauty, the pain, the misery, the people who sit and walk on the street. The people who sing their hearts out on a stage just to feel something, anything, the love and laughter that hardly lasts long, the sadness and depression that changes how a person's eyes look ahead. The smiles that fade when friends and family look away. People who have seen war in their homes and their heads, who have seen with the eyes and the heart should never see. Life is not smooth sailing, not even close. I may never own a home. I may always be fighting for rights I should already have. I may never feel truly financially secure. I may always be playing phone tag with insurance companies. I may have to be extremely picky with the health care choices I make because the health care system is broken. I will have to know where the nearest exit is everywhere I go, because I will never be safe until we have better protection against violence. My mental health will always be a struggle because there's not enough research into it. I may never be truly safe as a Middle Eastern woman because our powerful leaders lead conversations of harm about the Middle East and about women. Life is not smooth sailing. It's the bumpiest road to ever exist. I don't know if my life worth living will exist, how I imagine it now, but I can say that a life not worth living, a future I would never want to reach would be one where I gave up trying to change and make a difference. When I reach my future, I want to be someone who changed life into the future that somebody once imagined as their life worth living.
A Life Worth Living by Susan Aramony
From Melissa Betau April 23, 2024
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Second place winner of the 2024 Voices of UD contest: Susan Aramony, a senior majoring in Communication with a Media
Concentration, expands on therapy questions about a life worth living. Her
future vision includes safety, equality, and peace. She uses her voice and
photography to advocate for change despite challenges.
This audio recording was submitted for the Voices of UD 2024 audio essay contest for students, hosted by the University of Delaware's Center for Political Communication. The Voices of UD project is open for all to participate, but the annual contest is open to UD students only. The views and opinions expressed by the contest participants do not necessarily reflect the views of the University, its administration, or faculty. Learn more about the CPC's programs and initiatives at www.cpc.udel.edu. Visual editing created at https://app.wavve.co/.
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- Communication
- Date Established
- December 09, 2023
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