Initiation in the life of Zack

The Initiation, the moment the individual comes maturity, and must except their responsibilities. These are words that should not be thrown around, but I feel as though they they are thrown at me far too often. Teachers and other mentors are always trying to tell us how we are becoming more mature and must have more responsibility. Going into the middle school was supposed to be when be becames "middle-schoolers" and would therefore would go through the initiation to become these bettered individuals. There was, though, no moment, no time where we could say, "Yes I am now a mature person". There was only a brief ceremony at the end of school for the teachers and parents to pat themselves on the back.
The Initiation occurs spontaneously in the everyday moments that quickly become extrodinary and will stay with us for our entire lives. It is when your are six and lose your parents in the store. It is when you flunk a test after not studying. It was when I sat on a rock with numb fingers and the everything infront of me inscutible through the falling snow and warmth was five miles away and I had to accept the pain as my world and know that fighting the pain would only turn it from annoying to dangerous. It was when four boys stood shivering in a lake with me with mix expressions of both awe and apprehension hoping that I could show them how to hold their sagging bodies in the water and swim. The Initiation is when the responsibility is thrust upon you nomatter how you fight it and the only way to master it is to master yourself.

Richard II by William Shakespeare

Richard says that for his entire life death, “the antic sits, / Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp”. Only when sun starts to set on his life, and Bolingbroke draws near, does he realize that he is not fit to be a king. The Initiation is supposed to be when the protagonist comes into a new level of maturity. King Richard’s monologue in the second scene of the third act is how he voices the way he has matured in the face of crisis and how he now looks at his world. He talks scornfully of his previous self, the monarch, who the death could laugh at. Richard goes on to condemn his fellows for considering him to be something greater than he is. For Richard the Initiation is about coming to grips with his own mortality and being content with this new “mortal” self. He understands that he too “must live with bread” and sees himself as having know write to be called king.