Katie Halvorsen
Molly Bunton
GEP 101
04 November 2014
The Heart and the Fist Reflection
In the book The Heart and the Fist, author, Eric Greitens takes you through his experiences as he travels the world. At a young age Greitens always dreams of making a difference, so he began to travel around the world to work in refugee camps and serve the sick and poor. He realized that he could do more to protect the poor and sick by joining the army, and so he became a navy SEAL. As Greitens narrates his life we learn more about him, ourselves, and some important messages about being the best we can be. The themes in this book go well with the Public Affairs Mission, The Ethical Citizen: Can you make a difference? The themes I noticed were to take care of the things you honor/care about, and to try to learn about other cultures and to not stereotype.
One significant theme we run into is, if you honor something you will take care of it and put a lot of work into it. For example if you are in a club or organization, you should be/show your dedication to the club, or else it can look like you don't care about the people in the club or that you don't care enough to do what you are supposed to, or what the whole club is about. This idea comes up when Greitens is with Earl, his boxing trainer. When Earl saw that Greitens was there to stay, he bought Eric his own pair of boxing materials, like gloves, ropes, headgear, etc. By having/paying for your own equipment it makes the person care more about the items, and it gives them more motivation to come in to practice. For example, Greitens...