One Life, One Chance This story discusses the life of two people with the same name, Wes Moore and “the other” Wes Moore. Each faces completely different obstacles in life and learns lessons built from morals, wrong choices, stance in society, and reacting to past decisions. The life lessons learned throughout ones childhood, school life, and adulthood, shape the overall people each Wes Moore becomes. Everybody is going to have difficulties that will need to be faced, the hardships each person faces shows how important it is to make good decisions throughout a lifetime.
Through morals and choices made throughout one’s life, each decision made has an impact on the person’s future. As children, each Wes Moore learns the difference between what is right, what is wrong, and the morals they learn are built by the lessons their mothers teach them. In his early life, Wes Moore, was taught how to properly treat a woman. When playing a game with his younger sister, Wes had become upset that his sister was not playing properly and begun to hit her.
His mother immediately blows up about what Wes had done and he soon learned how his mother had experienced abuse from her previous husband. Seeing the reaction from his mother put into perspective how badly violence can affect a person, and this experience shapes the morals he would later live his life by. My personal life was very similar to theirs comparing how they were taught respect. As a child, I relate to the way Wes was taught to treat others. As the middle child with two sisters, I know what kind of frustrations he had and understand how difficult it is to handle the issue.
In society today it seems as if it is acceptable for two brothers to use violence as a term of settling issues, but as a brother of two sisters I had to learn at a young age that there is no excuse to handle disagreements with violence. The morals was taught through being a sibling of three were very similar to the ones Wes learned when he struck his younger sister. These morals learned are what shape the decisions made in the future. The decisions “the other” Wes makes throughout the book seem to steadily grow larger and once he starts making these decisions it’s difficult to change.
There are many different instances in the book were drugs and alcohol have a negative impact on “the other” Wes Moore’s life. As a child it begins to affect his family life when his father becomes addicted to drugs and starts getting drunk regularly, this later leads to the loss of his father. The way the author uses the landscape of Baltimore’s drug relation play’s a huge roll in the decisions “the other” Wes makes. This setting brings out the issues of poverty and gang relation each child is forced to grow up in.
While reading this book I could not find any correlation to Baltimore and my home town, the severity of drug issues and constant violence is an issue I could not imagine living in. In using this setting, the author clearly expresses how important the decisions “the other” Wes makes are. The main impact of the setting was the problems caused by poverty, which swept the community he lived in. Since “blacks” seemed to still be discriminated against in this area, they were forced to live in a poor community.
The drug game in these communities grew as a mean of income, and with the practices associated with the drug game, many bad decisions were made. As wrong decisions start being made, it continues as a never-ending cycle of crime and problems, “the other” Wes keeps digging himself into a deeper hole that grows harder to get out of. The way of life he creates for himself grows harder to change as he continues to make bad decisions. “The Author” Wes explains his different view on the childhood environment realizing what kind of life is values, he state, “That’s when I started to understand that I was in a different environment.
Not simply because I was in the middle of Pennsylvania instead of the Bronx or Baltimore. It was a different psychological environment, where my normal expectations were inverted, where leadership was honored and class clowns were ostracized. The decisions made by each Wes Moore had direct correlations to the man they become. The author, Wes Moore decides as a young man how he wants to pursue his life. “The author” Wes Moore and “the other” Wes Moore show opposites choices of what kind of decisions they make.
Each was given the same setting to grow up in, neither had a father Seeing the negative impact bad choices has had on his mother’s life, Wes values the idea of good decision making which would eventually lead him to be successful as an author. This story relates greatly to the life one faces beginning their career as a college student. Being placed in a new, unfamiliar area creates an opportunity for every person to create a new life for themselves. As one walks into their new life, there are thousands of different paths each person is able to take.
The first decision made in the new life of a college student is the people one decides to socialize with. This is a vital part of the new career started as a student; these people have direct impact on decisions made, new morals created, and overall happiness. This directly correlates to “the other” Wes’s life as a child new to Baltimore. His friends greatly peer pressure Wes throughout his life growing into society and showed a great severity in how he was looked at by others. The life of drug dealing and crime takes over his personality and creates more roads on his path of life leading him towards more bad decisions.
The second major idea as a new college student is creating a personal level of work ethic. Attending a University requires a level of work ethic that needs to be looked into by each person. Some students set goals of a higher GPA; others have the goals of passing a class by doing as little as possible. “The author” Wes Moore realizes earlier than “the other” Wes that he wants to be someone who puts as much work into his life as he can. The opportunity given on the area of education may play a vital role in the person they become.
Attending a military school, Wes is provided with learning quality and was ble to follow the lead of men acting as good examples. This late shaped his future as a successful business leader and veteran gaining un respect from his country. The hard work Wes puts into his life reflects the military schooling he was given. The honors he receives from his duty shows how he feels towards the value of hard work. “The author” Wes Moore states, “When it is time for you to leave this school, leave your job, or even leave this earth, you make sure you have worked hard to make sure it mattered you were even here.
His value of life is truly overwhelming and the examples he uses throughout the story puts a great impact on the people reading. Growing up in the same city, two boys had the choice of how they wanted to live their lives. Building their future through morals they were taught as children, challenges they had faced from drugs and alcohol, and bad decisions they had overcome, the two grew as men and chose how to face each step that life throws at them. In life, every individual person is faced with decisions each day, through morals and choices made throughout one’s life, each decision made has an impact on the person’s future.
