The Lives We Left Behind Essay

1068 words - 5 pages

Sarp Yanki Kalfa
Yankee
ENGLISH 15
April 25, 2013

The Lives We Left Behind

There are moments in our lives that will someday define us. It is not the gravity of the choices we make but the impression they leave on us that will one day define us as individuals. Had I known how drastically my life would change as a result of the choice I made one day when I was fifteen, my life would surely be very different. When my father first asked if I had any interest in going to France, the question passed through my mind as fleetingly as a spring breeze, but had I known that this decision would one day define me as a man, I might have answered differently. Today I have only God to ...view middle of the document...

Of course I did not know that at the time…
The following few months in the French boarding school passed without incident. They were the antithesis of an exciting time but having Jacque there made the days go by a little faster. Having grown up in the country, Jacque had very little in the way of formal education and didn’t handle himself well in formal situations. It wasn’t his fault that his laid back upbringing came out so often, but it impeded him from gaining access to the more formal circles within our community. Even today I can vividly remember the smell of burning candle wax that filled the loft in which I mentored him in the art of being a gentleman. Jacque may not have had a formal upbringing, but he was a fast learner and the tenacious attitude in which he attacked the lesson plans I gave him was nothing short of inspiring. Some of my fondest memories today are of Jacque and I practicing how to walk and shake hands like a gentleman in the poor candlelight of the loft which we shared.
Had I not had a friend like Jacque, those months I spent in Paris would have passed with an amount of entertainment tantamount to a church service. It seemed then that we would never be separated, two against the world as we saw it. I almost have to laugh at the naïve way in which we saw ourselves then. After all when I think back to Jacque, if I don’t laugh I cry. It is not the big decisions that define us as people. It is the small menial ones we take for granted on a day to day basis. Jacque probably never would have done anything amazing with his life had he lived, but the effect he had on mine will stay with me until the day I die- for even though I might have mentored Jacque on how to be a gentleman, it was he who taught me...

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