My Own Life to Siddhartha's Journey

In the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha experiences and goes through a long journey to find his inner spirituality and to find new ways of looking out on life. He tries finding who he really is in this life, and what the world around him truly means to him. Much like Siddhartha I have found that his journey is much like mine, in which we are trying to find out who we truly are to the world around us.

When I was younger, I lived in my hometown with the same people around me everyday, and I always listened to my parents. The same friends were there for me consistently day after day whenever I needed them, and they surrounded me and supported me through everything. Much like Siddhartha's relationship with Govinda, I had a friend who would always follow everything that I did. She wanted to stay with me through high school and be able to experience the same things that I did. From Siddhartha, "And if ever Siddhartha were to become a god, if he were to arrive among the radiant, than Govinda wanted to follow him, as his friend, his companion, as his servant, his spearman, his shadow" (6). Govinda wanted to be there at all the same places that Siddhartha was, and all Siddhartha wanted to do was move on to bigger and better things, and be able to experience things for himself without the help of anyone else. This is how i felt about my friend, I wanted to break free from the small town drama and continue on to a new journey to meet new people and experience new things.

Entering high school and making my decision to come to Paramus Catholic was something that was very new to me, but I wanted break free from my town, and have new life experiences that would shape me to who I am. Siddhartha made a decision to move on from the Brahmins to the Shramanas so that he could possibly become enlightened into a new life and be full of knowledge of new things. By leaving he was expecting to become a more knowledgeable person, and find the answers to all of his questions. Like Siddhartha, I felt that leaving my hometown and all of my friends would give me a chance to renew myself and have a clean slate with new people. No one would know who I was or what my background was, there would be no pre-judging  and everyone would have to know me for myself, and than determine what they think of me. Unlike Siddhatha though, I came into PC not knowing a single person, where as Siddhartha still had Govinda right beside him to follow him with his journey. Govinda said, "We have learned much, Siddhartha, there is still much to learn. We are not going in a circle, we are going upward, the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many steps" (16). This quote is significant to my life also, because my journey through high school and the experiences that i have had have continually changed as the time progresses, not one spiral mirroring the other, but rather each having it's own story to tell.