RAYMUND ABANES – ENG30-1

Life of Pi Essay

Everyone faces challenges in life. It's a matter of how you learn to overcome them and use them
to your advantage. – Celestine Chua. Life challenges are the spice of our existence whether it may be trials
in school, work, family, relationships and community that we live in. It makes us wiser and stronger as we
face our own daily battles. Some challenges could probably being a low performance in school and others
may find themselves being on top of their financial worries. Whatever our challenges are, it is our own
selves that makes a significant difference, the way we confront it and deal with it whether we are prepared
or not. Facing up our challenges and living through it gives us the best experiences that make up our lives.
It is also a way to determine what we are capable of and means of pushing ourselves to the limits and
going beyond our comfort zone. These challenges makes us a better person and a better decision maker
in whatever comes in the future. Once we have dealt our problems, so be it, whether we have successfully
surpassed it or not and we made the wrong choices, we need to get up and keep going. At the end of the
day, we can always look back on those tough times and feel proud on how we managed to deal with it
and say that life does gets better. Our perspective changes and I believe we do grow a little and take
those experiences as a learning curve to either do not make the same mistake, choose the wrong option
nor share advices to others due to the prior challenge that we have gone through before.

Life of Pi (Yann Martell) and The Impossible (J. A, Bayona, 2012) is very similar with the life
changing challenges that the main characters have experienced. They went through a massive character
testing and faced the difficulty with very limited options. The Impossible is a true to life story of family
spending holiday in Thailand. The 2004 Indian Tsunami was caused by an earthquake that slammed into
the coastline of 11 countries, damaging each country from East Africa to Thailand which resulted in at
least 227, 898 fatalities. It is a story of hope, despair, panic of a family who were caught up in the tsunami
tragedy while Life of Pi is a story of a young man who survived tormenting shipwreck and spending months
in a lifeboat with Richard Parker.

The main characters faced great amount of trials and sufferings in their unique situations which
pushes every individual into using their physical and mental strength, tests their belief and faith in God
and the survival ability in any condition and circumstances. I believe it is natural in our nature to be able
to survive any problems and issues we encounter. Resolving that problem or issue is dependent on the
individuals perspective and how we see the situation. Many of us, we usually use our family and love for
them to drive us to do better and come out as a better person. This is very true to myself. My motivations
and what drives me to achieve great things is mostly because of my family and mainly my kids. There are
far more sad and cruel things I have seen and experience but I always turn it into something positive
though it is always difficult in the beginning.

Watching Life of Pi inspired me to see things differently and appreciate things around us better.
God never tests us if He knows that we are not able to get through it. The main characters situation is the
most unfortunate because he lost his family and basically everything. He was angry initially but his
forgiveness and acceptance defines him as a very strong person and the quick thinking to be able to
survive. We become our best selves when things become difficult, well not in most cases especially if you
know that there is something else that could be done but his scenario is completely different and he can
only rely on his abilities and mental strength to survive.

The Impossible is also a story that I am very passionate about. Not just because of the love,
strength and perseverance of the family who survived the natural disaster but mostly the humanity in
every person who experiences the adversity. We have this natural instinct to help and make people feel
better even though our selves are hurting as well. Our willingness to help and assist even though our
selves needs it. Not true in a lot of situation these days but there are still people who does kind acts that
brings back my faith and belief in humanity. The family’s heartbreaking experience would have made
them to have that stronger bond and value every family member in a very different level. At the
beginning, the movie was a little difficult to watch as it reminds me of the experience I had when a typhoon
hits our town. My parents were in the city and it was literally just myself and my siblings in our family
home. We were young and inexperienced but as I have mentioned, we do have a natural instinct to
survive. A tornado blew away ¾ of our house roof and ceilings, all glass window were broken, trees flying
around, our neighbors crawling to our house and grabbing the grass to hold their dear life to get to our
house and all those sorts of scenarios. It was instant that our survival instinct kicks in, my brothers and
sister took a table into the bathroom (the only area of the house where the roof was intact), grabbed
some candles and matchsticks as well as dry clothes and food. Those items were wrapped in a plastic to
protect it from the rain. We did cover the table with anything that is water proof and we all hid under it.
We just wanted to survive and make sure everyone is safe. It was dark but we were holding each other
tight to ensure that everyone is together. Thinking about it now, it makes every single moment and my
siblings very precious to me and that determination to take care of one another (including our neighbor).
Nothing mattered but ourselves and the love that we feel for each other. Those were testing times but it
made us a better person, stronger bond and prioritize on what is important to us. A massive lesson
learned and a story to tell to our children to have that understanding about good qualities of our humanity
and value the people that love us and not just the material things that surrounds us now.