Description:The goal of my creative writing piece was partially self exploration, and partially and attempt to connect others through a common experience. When I first heard about this contest, I thought “I don’t feel connected to people through the Charter, I don’t really think about it!”. After sharing this thought with some of my classmates, they mostly agreed, which lead me to the realization that this common experience of taking rights and freedoms for granted is the very things that could connect people.
The opening stanza of my piece starts off with this idea: “I don’t think about my rights and freedoms much, and maybe I shouldn’t have to.” I used to hold this belief myself, and my goal was to relate to people who also think this way. In the next stanza I talk about the idea of rights, showing the reader that these are important, but still repeating the mantra of “I don’t think about my rights much”. The third stanza addresses the problem of hearing about words like “Freedoms” so much that they’re in in danger of losing meaning. In the media our rights and freedoms are spoken about a lot, but often in an impersonal way that makes them lose any meaning. The next three stanzas are meant to prove to the reader that you should think about your rights and freedoms, because if we don’t think about them we can easily ignore those who don’t have those same rights. I use sentence breaks in lines to place emphasis on certain words, as well as to force the reader to read some things twice. Lastly, I repeat the first stanza again, but this time I change my view: “I don’t think about my rights and freedoms much, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try”.