essay project

Casey Clark

Mr.Gowans

12 LA

4/8/13

Research paper

Earnest as defined by  merriam-webster.com dictionary is, “ a serious and intent mental state”, having said that, seriousness and earnestness are almost the same. Oxforddictionaries.com defines seriousness as, “the quality or state of being serious”. So if you think about it the only difference is that when you are being earnest you also are being intent, were as being serious can have its consequences. Earnestness can be a form of ignorance, were you think that you’re always right and nobody can sway that opinion. Serious can also mean that while you are thoughtful and thus you can see someone else’s point of view and will allow yourself to really and truly analyze the situation. Earnestness can also be looked at as a good thing, to say that you are strong willed and you are comfortable with yourself. To say that you are earnest you can also say that you are a person that is happy with the way things are and you are very intent with the way things are. But being intent can also be ignorant you put off everything and everyone that you don’t like, simply because they are different. When you are allowing yourself to be too intent you are allowing yourself to become judgment also, saying do they deserve my attention, are they worth my time. Thus comes the ignorance that follows being earnest, you end up being someone that hurts others so in turn you can feel happy with yourself, you can go to sleep at night knowing that you stood your ground. For an example out of the book, “How can you sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.” (Oscar Wilde Pg 78) In this case jack clearly points out that being earnest can be a horrible thing, when you do become to earnest you start to skip over things that matter. You skip over those things because in some past time or some prior experience you just didn’t give a crap about it. Seriousness is just fine because when you are being serious you can also analyze a situation every time one comes up, and you can act accordingly so that you are not rude or over bearing. Earnestness gives you no leeway to act in the way that you should so that you can handle a situation properly, cover every aspect of the argument or problem as to rid yourself of the difficulties. Fact of the matter is that you need to be more considerate than anything if you don’t first stop to find things out, you can never properly handle a situation, instead you will just fail to make progress into the problem at hand. But as long as you consider the other persons point of view earnestness can be an admirable trait, because you can be happy and you can be yourself without any complications.