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2301 Interview Paper - Anhuar Castaneda

1. The author interviews his mother, Irma Castaneda, for a school assignment on what constitutes a good life. 2. When asked what a good life entails, his mother responds that it involves having good health and family, who can provide love, support and a sense of belonging. 3. His mother believes one can live a good life by not holding grudges, communicating effectively with others, and focusing on self-improvement and building strong relationships.

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113 views3 pages

2301 Interview Paper - Anhuar Castaneda

1. The author interviews his mother, Irma Castaneda, for a school assignment on what constitutes a good life. 2. When asked what a good life entails, his mother responds that it involves having good health and family, who can provide love, support and a sense of belonging. 3. His mother believes one can live a good life by not holding grudges, communicating effectively with others, and focusing on self-improvement and building strong relationships.

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Anhuar Castaneda

Professor Sinclair
LBST 2301-338
April 9, 2023
2000 words

“Hmm, an interview paper on a good life, who should I ask to help me with this?” I sat there, blankly
staring at the screen for a good 2 minutes thinking about who I should ask to help me with this paper. “Maybe I
should ask the happiest person I know and get their secret to living a happy life!” No, that was too easy. “Or maybe
the oldest person so they could bestow their wisdom of life onto me.” No, that would take quite a while. “Oh I know
exactly who I should ask…” As I finished brainstorming my plan for the assignment, I packed up my stuff, left the
Atkins library and headed home. Once there, the person I was waiting to interview greeted me as if they were
expecting me for this very moment. “Hey mom, can I ask you a couple questions, it’s for a school project?”

Yep, my interviewee was my mom. Irma Castaneda, or as I usually call her “mami”, was the pretty obvious
choice. I was thinking about all the ways of going about with this interview paper that the obvious choice was right
in front of me. My mother was born on March 7th, 1977 in San Felipe Guanajuato, a small town in the central part
of Mexico. She mostly grew up on a ranch with her parents and her 4 brothers until 2005, a year after I was born.
She then shortly moved here to a very beautiful, snowy part of Colorado known as Colorado Springs, where the
lived for about 6 years before moving to Charlotte. She has been working as a janitorial maintenance worker for the
past 5 years. She has always been someone I look up to, not because she raised me all by herself without a
husbandly figure, but because she has bestowed so many values and beliefs onto me. She has been working on her
English ever since she moved to the U.S, and although it isn’t perfect, she never fails to offer me help on my
homework. Whenever I need anything, she is always there for me. And this homework wasn't any different as she
was nothing but ecstatic to answer my questions. With my Google Docs open and my fingers on the keyboard ready
to go, I asked her:

What is a good life?


“I believe that a good life is a life where you have good health and family. When one is healthy, you are able to
pursue any goals or interests without being held back by any physical or mental limitations. It allows you to
experience and enjoy your relationships and your hobbies to the fullest. And though your physical health is very
important, your mind should be healthy as well. You should always be aiming to become a better person, to love
those around you and to find peace within yourself. Family is also important because a supportive family can
provide you with a sense of belonging, love and emotional support. Strong relationships with your relatives can offer
a source of comfort during your hardest times, and help you celebrate your successes and achievements in your best
of times. Not to mention, they are the ones you can almost always depend on when you need guidance or advice as
you navigate the different stages of life.”

How does one go about living it?


“One goes about living a good life by developing importance in what I mentioned before. And you do that by not
holding any grudges and having good communication with everyone, whether it be just family or not. Living life
with grudges just creates unnecessary stress and tension. I feel like although it can be pretty tough to get used to, it
is important to practice forgiveness and let go of past grievances in order to move forward in life and in a more
positive direction. When we get to that point where we don't hold grudges and let go of anything negative in the past,
we are then able to focus on building stronger and better relationships with others. Good communication is also
crucial because when we communicate effectively with one another, we are then able to better understand each
other's needs, feelings and perspectives. Though sometimes we might not like or agree with others, they also deserve
the right to state their opinions and speak their minds. Good communication is probably one of the most important
skills to have because that's essentially how you interact and get your point across. It can ultimately help to prevent
misunderstandings and conflicts, but it can also facilitate more positive interactions as well.”

How is happiness defined and understood?


“The definition of what happiness is can be very subjective in my opinion because it all depends on each individual's
experiences and how they find contentment. Happiness is a deeply personal and individual feeling that is shaped by
our unique experiences, values and beliefs. Therefore, the key to understanding happiness lies in recognizing that it
is a very subjective experience influenced by everything that has happened to us, and maybe what we want to
happen to us in the future too.”

What are the problems we humans must address?


“There's a lot of problems we humans have to address, but it all stems from the fact that we need to accept and
realize we are all humans after all. None of us are perfect and none of us ever will be perfect, and so we need to put
that in our heads that errors and mistakes are bound to happen, but they shouldn't define us. Those negative
experiences should be learning lessons that we should see as benefits as we learn from our mistakes. Yes there’s a lot
of external problems in the world like environmental challenges and social and economic inequality, but those are
problems on a larger scale. They are challenges that maybe we will never solve in our lifetime, so why focus on
something we can’t make such an impact on instead of things we can resolve, which is ourselves. There are many
problems within ourselves that we should prioritize first over some of the not so controllable ones. Instances like
mental health and well-being, personal and interpersonal conflicts, and personal growth and development for
example.”

What were your best and worst experiences?


“I’d say my best experience was getting to know God. It provided me with a sense of purpose, meaning and
connection to something greater than myself. It gave me a sense of inner peace, guidance and comfort as I realized
that I am not alone in this universe and that there is a greater purpose to my life that lives beyond my individual
experiences. I think getting to know God has greatly helped me as an individual and I advise many out there to seek
God in their life as well.”

What would you add to your life right now?


“I don't think I would add anything to my life right now. I believe everything in life happens for a reason and at this
point in my life I am pretty happy. I have 2 beautiful and amazing children who I raised to become amazing
individuals and hope for the best as you are going into college and Sugey as she has just started high school. It is
pretty unfortunate that I will be a bird in an empty nest one day, but that's how life goes.”

Do you have any regrets?


“I do have regrets, just like the many others out there. I feel like though they might seem like a bad thing, regrets like
in the past for example, gave me awareness and the desire to change. I know many people who have dwelled on their
regrets for too long and it ended up being detrimental to their wellbeing. Regrets are very hard to deal with
especially if they're things we could have avoided or changed, but it is essential for us to use them as a learning
opportunity and not let them consume us. We should instead be focusing on the present moment and use what we
have learned to make better choices moving forward.”

What’s one event you would go back to and why?


“I am not sure if it’s considered an event but a point in my life I would go back to would be when I was a catholic
missionary in Mexico. The two year long missions I did in Mexico and Spain really did deepen my understanding of
the catholic faith and allowed me to grow and improve along with the others I helped. Evangelizing was of course
the main purpose, but the chance to provide spiritual support and strengthen those communities by promoting peace,
reconciliation and unity truly helped me keep developing my love for my faith and gave me the chance to experience
genuine happiness.”

What advice would you like to give me?


“You're my son who's all grown up now, so I'm not sure there's any more advice I have that I haven't already given
you. I guess if I would have to give you one piece of advice now it would be to find your own happiness. To not force
that feeling through monetarily value and materialistic things, but to reach a point in your life where you are
genuinely happy. Yes I recognize it can be hard to reach that point but you can cultivate it through basic actions like
being grateful and self-reflecting. I know for me it was hard as well, but I found that happiness when I devoted
myself to God and the Catholic faith, spreading my love and my knowledge through my missions as well. That is how
I found genuine happiness, and you can as well if you find that one life-changing experience.”

After doing this interview with my mother, I feel like I learned about her perspective on things not in a new
manner, but in a more expressive way. I already knew she enjoyed being a missionary back in the day and that she
valued family and communication, but I didn’t exactly know why. She more so conversed with me with her values
and her experiences in a way where I could take it as an opportunity to apply them to my life. In “The Happiness
Hypothesis”, Haidt talks about Richard Davidson and this idea of positive effects. Where the post-goal positive
attainment effect is a pleasurable feeling you get after you achieve something you want, and the pre-goal positive
attainment effect, which is what my mom focused on a lot, where it’s the pleasurable feeling you get as you make
progress toward that goal. She’s entrusted me with 2 goals, one which is to make it far in life and continue this
educational path she wasn’t able to complete, and the other which was to attain genuine happiness. They’re both
tasks with unmeasurable rewards, but as she has said to me numerous times “It’s the journey that matters.”

I experience things that should be learning lessons for my own personal growth and improvement. As Haidt
says, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Everything I do must be backed by a motive
and a purpose, and when faced with adversity and negative outcomes I must overcome them because I should
always be aiming to improve and be the best version of myself. Take for instance the idea of vertical coherence. I
have short and long term goals that can be very different in terms of achievability and time, but I should always
enjoy the journey and not just the end. She has time and time again reiterated the importance of finding happiness
that comes from a place of genuineness, and not just materialistic and monetary value. She wants me to live life in
the way that I feel that it is best for me, but also with purpose because as she always states “Life is what you make
of it.”

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