A Present from the Present to the Future

Dear Anthony, as I write this in order to gain extra credit, you should know that from 1 Week, a month, a year or 2 from now you shouldn’t be too harsh on yourself, you shouldn’t be too irrational and demanding of yourself. You should love yourself and understand that all those things you say about yourself really do affect you. You might say things in different ways to others but you should truly know that sometimes you shouldn’t hide things, you should release them to the world and let them know with your voice what you mean and how you feel.

It is because of how you say things and feel about yourself when you are in the midst of a critical moment is what’s going to break or make it for you in school, home, and life in general. So what if you fight with your mother over dumb things? You still have a lifetime to make things right, so what if you do like crap on a midterm and you feel like you want to throw yourself over a bottomless pit and never rise? You have to wake up and keep working hard as a silent workhorse. You shouldn’t call yourself dumb, you shouldn’t call yourself all those insults and slurs in Spanish that degrade you so much, you shouldn’t step on the beliefs of others and their opinions because they might not be as sophisticated or intelligent as yours. You should let go things and grow, because if you don’t do it now, you will never do it.

I can say all this reflective stuff about myself as of now and look like I am overbearing as heck, fair enough. But you should know that that’s the purpose of why am I writing this. Because I count on you to make things right in the future and cross off all these introspective things about me in the future and grow: grow and be kind, never condescending and self-destructive of

yourself, because that’s your weapon: your words and their tone and how they built up their meaning because of what power you give to your own words.

I wish that you wouldn’t forget about this simple reflection, in years to come you should come back, whether as a grown man or as man child. You should do it to reflect and to know that living is the greatest gift and how far you have come, that’s up to future me to decide.

Rhetorical Analysis

In my personal letter “A Present from the present to the future” I try to give a simple twist to the assignment and take the opportunity to be introspective with myself and write a personal letter about where I am currently. It’s not something that is too deep but rather reflective of my
position in the present, of the issues of the present I face in school and at home. This letter’s title has a meaning: to be a gift to a future me, a future that is so uncertain that I don’t what’s going to happen to me but I do know for sure it’s going to be a present, because the best presents for me are the ones that make me laugh, especially when I reflect and think to myself “Oh yeah, that’s me being a silly boy 5 years ago!!!”.

For starters, in this personal letter I try to use Pathos as a tool to display and convey emotion about how I feel. I do this by explaining how I feel and how I currently do in this circumstances. Another element that I use to convey my emotions is the way the letter is written. I use my own Point of View and a first person view in order to convey a meaning of looking forward and looking ahead. “You should love yourself and understand that all those things you say about yourself really do affect you. You might say things in different ways to others but you should truly know that sometimes you shouldn’t hide things, you should release them to the world and let them know with your voice what you mean and how you feel.” The usage of this perspective and the repetition of the word “You” server to give that feel of looking ahead of things, to look forward and work in these areas before it’s too late. Another device that I use to convey a rhetorical meaning is simile “so what if you do like crap on a midterm and you feel like you want to throw yourself over a bottomless pit and never rise?” I use this device to draw a comparison about how I feel about myself and my state of mind at the moment I am writing this, the usage of simile serves to provide me a way to look forward and ahead despite of how difficult and frustrating it might be for me to move on of such bruises.