When I Open My Eyes

I was brought up to be very narrow-minded, with the view that things are the way they are, just because. I've observed many people who made it to adulthood maintaining that dogma. With my confrontational- and challenging-type personality, I've been constantly dissecting religious and civil teachings, keeping only the foundations for what is truly good and bad. While what is good and bad can be subject to opinion, most people agree that people should do good and avoid the bad. Instead of natural selection as perceived in biology, I try to formulate an intelligent selection.

Many people nowadays attempt to divide beliefs between church and state; there should be no integration of any form of religion with any form of government. But when the spiritual realm coexists on the same plane as the physical realm and inadvertently persuades the actions of the spiritually ignorant, an awareness to the spiritual realm should be heeded.

When referring to my childhood, I prefer to use the phrase, "back then". Back then, I was raised to be a non-denominational Christian and I was taught about God and whole-heartedly believed what was in the Bible.

Only when I started learning about other religions and spiritual matters did my mind truly start tripping. Sophomore year of high school, my English teacher Mr. Burnham gave the class a research topic on world religions and present it to the class. My class lined up in front of his desk, where were allowed to pick from the list of major world religions. I figured I would choose some form of protestant Christianity.

When I got up to his desk, he looked up at me and said, "Oh, Steven, you're going to do your paper on Taoism."

I was confused, "Wait, I thought we got to pick our own."

"Yeah, but this is something I specifically want you to do. I think you'd enjoy it. It's not really a religion, so much as it is a philosophy."

"I don't even know what Taoism is though."

"Steven, that's why you get to learn."

Mr. Burnham had been the sponsor of the Chess Club, which I was involved in both freshman and sophomore years, so he'd already known me for the past two years. In addition to being my English teacher that sophomore year, he had also been my Karate-do sensei which I signed up for at a community college the past semester. With three avenues, I see now how my teacher got to know me well enough to determine that this would be beneficial for me to research.

All throughout the research of my paper, I kept going back and talking to Mr. Burnham. He was happy to see how excited I was in what I was researching. Taoism seemed to give me answers; everything just made so much more sense than what I had previously been taught. I was finding out stuff on my own.

After everyone had completed our research finals, I asked Mr. Burnham to print me out a copy of the world religions list. I headed straight to the library after school and began doing more research on world religions. All major world religions are good in nature. They all teach good morals and hold people accountable.

This isn't so much as a story or an article, as it is a message.
I am grateful to you, Mr. Burnham, for helping me to open my eyes.