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Diego Camarena-Torres

Miss Williams-Arnold

English Language Arts II (Gr 10) Honors

5 May 2021

Color Key:

Light Blue - Compound Sentence

Light Pink - Complex Sentence

Yellow - Compound-Complex Sentence

Enlightenment

When one is enlightened it means that they have been brought from darkness to light, so

in order to feel enlightened you must have experienced darkness ahead of time. Darkness can be

a variety of different things, as it symbolizes some type of evil enigma, so some people may be

experiencing darkness subconsciously. In Plato’s Allegory he describes a setting where prisoners

are chained against a wall of a dark cave for their entire life, and their reality is developed

through watching shadows reflected on the wall. The prisoners see what is on the wall as the

truth, without realizing that the truth is what is outside of the cave. When someone managed to

see the real world and what hides behind the cave walls, no one believed their story. The

prisoner's reality was projected on the cave walls, so if someone tells them that the reality they

see on the walls is not true, they will not believe them. Similarly, children are always deeply

influenced by what is told to them, so feeding them false information makes them ignorant of the

truth. Children are gullible, so they believe anything told to them. If you contradict a statement

told to a child, they will believe you are lying and rather trust the information they have known
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to be true. Take for example Santa Claus, if you tell a child that Santa Claus does not exist they

will think you are lying since someone else already told them that Santa Claus is in fact real.

When I was in second grade, a classmate had told me that religion was not real, so as a

gullible 7 year old, I gave credence in whatever he had to say. Around 3rd grade, my parents

decided to introduce me to catholicism; however, I believed it was fake because someone had

told me so. Every Sunday that my family would take me to church I would never pay attention,

instead I would fidget around and try to pass the time as much as possible. My parents even

decided to sign me up to do my first communion at the local church, which I thought was the

most boring thing ever. I had these feelings toward any religious activity because I believed it

was all a hoax. However, two years ago my family received news that my cousin had been in a

terrible car crash, and his survival rate was very low. This day was the day that I decided I was

going to ask the lord to condone my infidelity and save my cousin. To my surprise, my aunt

called the next day to tell us that my cousin was still breathing. I was enthralled. I could not

believe it. Ever since that day I’ve been more religious than ever before and am now actually

interested in religion. I have now completed my confirmation by a connoisseur of the roman

catholic church, and have since dedicated a 15 minute daily rosary to all the people of the earth.

That experience changed my life for the better and enlightened me to the truth, allowing me to

grow as a person.

To conclude, one can feel enlightened in many different ways such as learning that

unicorns do not exist, or more serious topics like my case with religion. Everyone experiences

enlightenment sometime in their life. In my situation, my cousin had been the victim of a terrible

car crash. He ended up surviving which taught me a very valuable lesson about religion. I

sincerely believe that his survival was a demonstration from the lord that there truly is someone
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up in the skies somewhere. This enlightenment influenced me to keep on praying and become

more interested in religion. The darkness of my past self that believed religion was false, was

outshone by the new light revealing the truth and telling me I was wrong. Enlightenment not

only exposes you to the truth, but it helps you become the better version of yourself.