My Story ❀

I come from a middle-class Puerto Rican family. Born in a military base in Germany and raised in the beautiful island. My parents got to live all over the world because my dad was in the military. They come from a long way of having nothing to having so much to give my siblings and me. They are exceptional parents, who aren’t afraid to show us their love.

All my life my siblings and I have taken care of each other when mom and dad were busy working, of course the oldest one taking care of the little ones. My big sister, whom I have to be grateful for, has made me a responsible college student. Since elementary school she was the one in charge of making sure my twin brother and me had our homework ready; this made me realize how important studies were.

My siblings and I were raised to be independent. We all learned how to cook, iron and do the chores around the house without being asked. This is why I do everything by myself, or I guess, almost everything. Our parents taught us to take care of ourselves; so when we got off to live alone, we wouldn’t need someone else’s help.

Reflection on Billy Mills: Second Part

As Peter Roberts explains, “the perception of sameness logically implies the perception of difference, which in turn implies that those who are perceived as different are treated differently”. This is why Billy Mills’ external journey is full with prejudice, lack of support from his team, school, and various forms of social injustice. As the “white world”, who are the Americans that share the sense of sameness, see Billy with another skin color and language, they treat him differently, whereas he has to fight with his inner self to keep fighting for his dream and what he believes in. We can see this presented in the movie when Billy’s teammate bullies him in the locker room because of his ethnicity and yet he moves on.

But there is a time in Billy's life were he is misdirected, looses his passion for running and just feels misunderstood. As he says in the movie: “I've lost the love of running, now I'm a running machine”. This part of his life is were his internal journey is more critical than ever. Another thing Peter Roberts explains is that “the constant association with and experience of sameness leads to a recognition of one's own features as normal and those of others as abnormal/strange/foreign”. Maybe this is why Billy now has lost his spirit, because he does not feel in place, whereas he believes he is abnormal and strange. Moreover, in the movie is presented when Billy says: “I just want to be Billy Mills, not Billy the Indian”.

Reflection on Billy Mills

Billy Mills, Lakota Sioux runner, was responsible for one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history. A complete unknown in the track-and-field world, Mills outran a field of international track stars to win the gold medal in the 10,000-meter race in the 1964 Olympic games in Tokyo. Mills’ win was the first gold medal by any American in this event, and was a particular source of pride for Native Americans (Winters, K., 2004). Based on this inspirational story, a movie was made in 1983 named “Running Brave”. In the movie, Billy Mills’ internal and external journeys are well presented and we can see how they relate.

As in real life, in the movie, Billy Mills is an American Indian who, as a boy lived on a reservation in Kansas. Since he was little his happiness was to run, he would win some races in high school track meets, but when it came to a famous coach from the University of Kansas, he didn’t want him on his team because: "Indians are quitters”, as his character explained in the movie. Then Billy, whose goal in the future was to compete for a spot in the Olympics, firmly said to the coach he doesn’t quit. It is here where you can see he wanted to prove him and the “white world” wrong.