Finding Meaning in a Stolen Life Essay

It is state that tout ensemble living story does indeed involve hapless yet it is what we mention of this scathe that result determine whether or non we hazard inwardness in our bread and butter. One must look within and more or less himself to create meaning in her sprightliness iodine can decision meaning by creating constitutes or doing deeds, experiencing things or encountering people, and choosing ones attitude towards the slimy in her life. There lead always be obstacles in the way to meaningthe tragical one-third of irritation, guilt, and death still one must use this to fuel your drive to point out meaning by maintaining tragic optimismfaith, love, and hope.Many people lead difficult lives, however, boneyly find meaning and some others choose not to. In the memoir A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard, Jaycee Dugard is gear up finished what she describes as an intolerable situation, barely man historic periods to cause meaning of the brave outing in her stolen life. Jaycee Dugard has experienced tragic triad disquiet, guilt, and death. She deals with pain throughout the entirety of her early life. The main source of her pain and suffering was Phillip who kidnapped and institutionalise her through hell on earth.Jaycee rec completelys the daylight Phillip in like mannerk herthe introductory painful experience she had with the man that would strip her of her innocence. Jaycee recollects what was running through her judging at the time of her traumatic abduction Someone is dragging me and I am macrocosm lifted. My limbs shade like they weigh a ton. I afflict to resist and try to push outside(a) from farther into the bushes. The paralyzing shadeing returns suffice with by a strange electrical current zapping sound. I am helpless to resist for some reason. (9-10).It is not long subsequently her abduction when Jaycee is put through an even greater mental test. She has been s dispense and alone since she was interpreted from her world on that faithful day and now Phillip would plainly nonplus her more s tutorshipd and alienated. Phillip does to Jaycee what nobody should ever collect done onto them. She experiences pain physic solelyy and mentally when he rapes her and she remembers him trying to justifying her suffering He says it would be easier on me if I didnt resist or struggle so much next time. He says it wouldnt hurt as much.I think to myself, if you didnt do it in the startle place hence it wouldnt hurt at all. But I am too frightened by his act to say a thing in objection to him. (31-32). Jaycee feels her first sense of guilt in her new life when she is fork outn a pool. Her kidnappers brought her home a kitten and she was happy exclusively says, I have begun to feel guilty for asking for her in the first place. I should have thought about the place we were going to put her. This is no place for a kitty. He says his aunt is an animal caramel br birth and will take her. (41).She does not want the kitten to stay in the little room with her because she knows it is not fair for the kitten to not have a lot of space to run around and be happy. Her bad the kitten away makes her feel better because she knows it is not good for the kitten to be stuck in the room of suffering. She man ages to get over this guilt notwithstanding soon she is faced with a greater obstacle. Jaycee experiences death for the first time. It is not that of her own life exclusively the death of one of her animals that brings her greater suffering she notes, Blackjack lived a long life.Toward the end I took primary care of him and I was the one that arrange him when he died. It was actually hard for me. At the time, I had make a cat enclosure which he would go in at night to contain safe, and thats where I found him one morning I cried a lot for him. (160). Jaycee was an animal rooter and for her to find the cat she took care of dead was very hard for her. However, all of these experience s made her a stronger person. Jaycee did not allow the tragic triad to keep her from making meaning of her life. She kept searching.Jaycee Dugard was on her way to countering with two of the triplet parts of tragic optimismlove, and hope. She had children at a very young age and although she did not want them from Phillip or at the ages of fourteen and seventeen she loves her children very much. She loves both of her daughters, she did not want to give either of them up, stating, I did it because that was the only thing I could do. I would do it all again. The most peculiar thing in the world came out of it my daughters. (110). Her love for her two daughters supply her positivity towards her adverse life.She was a very hopeful person all through her young life and her daughters gave her more of a reason to brook fast. Jaycee was constantly hoping that she would one day be emancipated. When she is first placed in the room out back, she hoped someone was looking for her and that they would find her one day to take her from home. Although she had a rough life from the age of eleven until the age of twenty-nine, she kept a very positive attitude by doing work and keeping busy. She found greater meaning in her suffering by creating works. She started a businessa printing companywith Phillip who has put her through endless torture.Over time she learned how to do it on her own and does most of the work for the company I work up a design and he takes it to the costumer and gets it approved when he brings it back to me, I print them on cards. The job turns out great and I am very proud of myself Phillip says that he thinks I should do the workups and he will get the jobs and help with the printing. (127). Instead of weeping in sorrow for herself that her childishness and beginning of her adult life were taken away from her, she does work to make herself productive.This is good for her because rather of living in the existential vacuum, she feels like she is acco mplishing something other than watching television every day like she used to and she feels important. . It takes a very positive person to find meaning in the large-hearted of suffering Jaycee had to perish, and she embodied this person. She chooses to have a positive attitude towards being captured and enslaved. Throughout the time she was taken she kept a journal and instead of always writing about how much she misses her mom and wishes she was not with Phillip and Nancy, she wrote, 10 things that make me happy 1.hearing someone laugh 2. when my cats are near me 10. knowing someone loves me. (183-184). Instead of thinking of all the bad in her life, she chose to stay positive and think of things she appreciates about life. Not everyone can do that, only when she learned that staying positive is more meaningful. All life involves suffering as the main character Jaycee Dugard would know. She suffered a lot in her life from the time she was kidnapped up until she was saved eighte en years later. She suffers the first day she is taken. I want my mommy.I want time to reverse itself and give me a do-over, she cries about the situation she is in (10). Then it gets worse. Jaycee describes what is going on when she was thrown in the back of the car and taken to Phillips house where her suffering would begin A blanket is thrown on top of me and I feel a lot of weight on my back, I feel as if I cant breathe. I hear voices but they are muffled. The car is moving. I want to get out of the car. I twist and turn, but something is pinning me down. (10). She goes through a scarring experience as he puts her through the greatest suffering she will have to endure in her 18 years here.A few days by and by kidnapping Jaycee, Phillip takes advantage of her, he stands back up and takes off all his clothes. I do not want him to do that I feel so helpless and vulnerable. I feel so alone. He lies on top of me. I cant stop crying. (31). She was rape and had to suffer through it because she had no other choice as she was too horror-struck of what he would do if she did not cooperate. Even after being raped and impregnated, she had to pretend she was not the mother of her children. She says that, on the roof I felt like my pulse was going to jump out of my skin.I treasured to grab her and hold her. (154). Phillip and Nancy wanted Jaycee to pretend that they were the parents of the children she gave birth to and that she was just their sister, but Jaycee did not want that. Jaycee wanted to be able to take care of her children and it killed her that she had to let Nancy do it. However, she did overcome the situation. When she was found and reunited with her real family, she wanted to pile up with Nancy, I wanted to see her for many different reasons, the biggest being closure. sexual relation her that what she and Phillip did was not okay in any way. (243). Although her kidnappers took most of her life away from her, she still stood up to them in the en d and wanted them to know she was a stronger person. Although Jaycee suffered a lot she did not let it get the best of her. She has made meaning of her life. However, it did not happen right as she was freed as she said, my ripening has not been an overnight phenomenon. Nonetheless it has slowly but surely come about. (261). She is doing well now and both of her kids are in high school. She reunited with one of her friends from her childhood and now they are really close.She knows what they did to her was wrong but she said she got the most precious things out of it and that was her two daughters whom she loves a lot. She stays nett of living a provisional existence while she was captured and even after she was liberated, she didnt go through moral deformity and bitterness. Sometimes, Jaycee looks at her life and thinks she thinks, I dont deserve it. (267). Jaycee was a self-determinist and believed she had free will to make of her life what she wanted it to be. She utilized tra gic optimism to resolve the tragic triad she had to go through.Jaycee kept a positive attitude towards her life and used this to create work and endure the experiences she had to go through and to find love, the greatest way to make meaning of ones life, in the children she was forced to bare. She now knows that, its the simple things that count, and she has used that mentality to make meaning of all her suffering throughout her whole life (268). Citations 1. A Stolen Life Dugard, Jaycee. A Stolen Life. N. p. , n. d. Web. 22 May 2012. 2. Mans chase for Meaning Frankl, Viktor E. Mans Search For Meaning. N. p. Beacon Press, 2006. Print.